Dueling Dukes
by T.S. Blue
Summary: The battle wasn't of their making or even their choosing, but one way or another they got pulled into it… on opposing sides. AU; sort of "wild east" meets Hatfield and McCoy. Rated T to be on the safe side. Complete.
1. In the City

_**Author's Note:  
><strong>Every bit of this story is attributable to two things:_

_1.) A misheard lyric, and_  
><em>2.) The new scenery on my commute to and from work (and everywhere else I go, too).<em>

_These days, I look out my windshield at rolling hills and prairie grasses, bluffs and outcroppings of stone. And I was cruising along one day, listening to a CD that I hadn't heard in years, when this slightly familiar song started with a harmonica riff. Already my head was spinning with images of lonesome trains and cowboys, tumbleweeds and old wood-frame buildings. Then the lyrics started and I heard, "They were dueling/ dueling Daltons..." and right away I thought - Dueling Dukes. Upon referencing the internet I (re)discovered that the song is _Doolin-Dalton_, so I did some research on the Doolin-Dalton gang._

_This story came from that little experience, even though it has nothing to do with the Doolin-Dalton gang. I would say it's not quite wild west - more wild east with a hint of Hatfield-McCoy._

_While it started with_ Doolin-Dalton_, the story was ultimately developed around the lyrics to 47 different Eagles' songs. So the Eagles get a serious nod here for their awesome storytelling. Each section starts with an epigraph of the lyrics that influenced that particular portion of the story.  
><em>

_I understand that the site is misbehaving. Some people can't log in at all, others are finding that alerts and private messages are backlogged. For those that I communicate with regularly, hang in there. Whether your message is stuck on the way to me, or mine's stuck on the way to you, eventually they'll all get there. Site malfunctions or no site malfunctions, I had to post today._

_(Because: happy birthday, M.L. Thanks for being such a fun sounding-board.)  
><em>

_NOTE: The lyric epigraphs have been removed from this posting of the tale in order to comply with ffdotnet's guidelines. The complete version, with lyrics, is on AO3. I'm sad to have two different postings but I do understand ffdotnet's concerns when it comes to copyrighted material. Link to the story on AO3 is on my profile page.  
><em>

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><p><strong>1. In the City<strong>

He jerked awake. It had been warm where he was, soft. Comfortable and he might have mistaken it for safe. Sometimes he did, in those rare sleepy moments where he had a bed under him and walls around. On the best nights he even dreamed, sometimes saw the greens of the fields and heard the lowing of a cow, felt the sprinkling of mist in the spring air and there were times he managed to convince himself he smelled pie. Then it would come to him slowly, how the pie was an impossibility, had been nothing more than a fantasy for going on five years now. From there the rest would start to disappear: the trees, the livestock, the bright red of a freshly painted barn, the soil and he would realize all over again that he had nothing. No pie, no mother to bake one, no cow and no farm.

"Baby," and a hand petting him might have been trying to make up for everything that he'd just given up by regaining consciousness, except it was all wrong. The scent of sweet powder that did nothing to hide the more rancid odors that ruled this place, the threadbare linens, the kiss that was anything but motherly.

Ruby. But it wasn't her that had woken him up.

"Yellow-eye," he whispered toward the door. Wide open against the wishes of the prostitute wrapped around his chest, but that was just something she had to deal with. He had more than himself to worry about, and it served her as well as any of them if he kept one ear cocked toward the hall. At least when he wasn't sleeping, and he shouldn't have been now, either. Ruby was just darn good at what she did (and nothing else).

"Duke," came back at him from the far side of the door frame. Then a face peeking in and blushing like only Yellow-eye would. A moan from Ruby because she didn't much care for the interruption and didn't know what to make of Yellow-eye, but then no one else did either. Too slight to be much of a fighter, but Luke figured that when you were the best scout in three cities and a damn good shot to boot, maybe you didn't need to be very strong. Yellow-eye was strategically important to him, to everyone in the Porter gang, and anyone who couldn't see that could just stuff it, as far as he was concerned. "Something's brewing."

He was on his feet then, no matter how Ruby clutched at him, trying to bring him back to her bed. She had only been at Miss Mabel's house here on Monroe Street for a year or so, but she must have been a good worker; seemed like she had managed to snag a third floor room with a fine view of the street below. (Then again, could be that her association with Luke brought her up in the ranks a bit. Being the consistent choice of Cap Porter's favorite lieutenant could do that for a lady of the evening.)

The girl's fingernail left a scratch on his arm from where she tried to hold onto him, little burning sting on the surface of his skin as he stepped away from her to plaster his back against the rough wall. Slid one careful step at a time toward the window with the best vantage point where he could see – and be seen from – the street below.

"The lantern," Yellow-eye hissed from back in the doorway, gesturing for Ruby to blow out the glowing bedside flame, but Luke waved them both off. Too late now, and the sudden darkness up here would draw as much attention as his shadow would anyway. Heard a clip-clopping hoof beat, took himself a glance out through the glass, sweating against the summer heat and just about laughed. Bit it back because he did want to live through the night and it wouldn't do any of them in here a bit of good for his guffaws to go announcing where they all were, but the urge was there to clutch at his ribs, tip his head back and let the laughter come roaring from his mouth.

"The fool," was all he said, shaking his head as he moved carefully away from the window and back toward Yellow-eye. Grabbed the shirt he'd hastily shucked an hour or so back and stuffed his arms into it.

"Duke," Ruby complained, a hand reaching for him in protest of this dressing he insisted on doing. She wanted him back on the bed with her, wanted an uninterrupted night with him but neither of them lived the kind of life that would allow for that.

"What?" Yellow-eye asked, because the scout knew that any thoughts of spending a peaceful night at the brothel were pointless. They were fighters, maybe not the noble kind, but they were good at what they did. If they weren't they'd be dead, and while Luke couldn't swear he was afraid of death, he didn't reckon he was ready for it, either. Not yet.

"Only that yellow-haired fool," he answered back. "Babe Sheridan sitting pretty in the middle of the street, no hat or nothing. Just begging for trouble."

"Luke," came back at him, Yellow-eye forgetting that they were not in private where such informalities made sense. The scout's eyes wide, and this was why the other guys got all squeamish. Because Yellow-eye would lose track of the fact that they were fearless warriors from time to time. "He's a—"

"I know what he is." They both did. He was a fast-riding playboy, an improbably tall and ridiculously crazy kid pretending to be a man and managing to fool them all, half the time. He was also on the other side of this thing that had torn the northwestern corner of Georgia in half, disseminating the remnant parts to this camp or that. Babe Sheridan was a Hickory. "Hush now. Real quiet-like," and without leaving shadows that the enemy could spot (but Yellow-eye was good at that, better than any of other men around them, and that was why the scout was an asset to the Porter gang), "go get everyone else gathered down in the kitchen. Women too." Something bad was fixing to happen, and Luke had obligations to keep his own men safe. But he reckoned it wouldn't hurt anything if the whores that called this building home got protected as well. "Come on, girl," he said to Ruby, who pouted, but got herself up and made herself reasonably decent before following him down the creaking stairs to the ground floor.

Found most of the gang already down there, counted heads and knew who his stragglers were. Sought out Mabel and shook a clinging Ruby off his arm so he could go and talk to the madam in private while Yellow-eye herded those idiot, giggling Harper boys down the stairs, then nodded to him over the heads of the rest of the gang, a signal that everyone was as accounted for as they could be.

Luke nudged Mabel back over to organize her girls in the cramped old kitchen while he glowered at the men who were pouting over what they'd been interrupted from. Twice his age, some of them, and they acted like they had no more control over themselves than rutting goats half the time. All except Emery Potter huddling in a corner with eyes closed in prayer, leaving his face nothing more than a pale blob in the dim glow of the lantern.

"All right," he started to instruct, and then there was a crash, tinkling glass from the front of the house. Hiss and sizzle, and he knew those sounds. Could count time by those sounds, had been doing so for exactly twenty-six months and eighteen days, it was how he knew today's date to be June ninth, eighteen hundred ninety-four. It was not a good sound, not attached to any happy memories, but his familiarity with it would save him tonight. Forgot all the instructions he intended to give and hollered, "Go! Move now!"

Seconds of silence, everyone afraid to breathe in the heavily hanging heat, the door at the back of the house narrow enough that only one or two at a time could fit through, six out and thirty-two to go. Pop and crackle was all it took before the yelling began, before whatever manner of order they'd maintained broke, and all Luke could do was to tell them to go, go, go and hope like hell they listened.

He was the last man out, could feel the heat sear against his back, but in front of him was the freshness of breathable air.

It was easy then, to move. Would have been easier to flee, to declare every man for himself and leave the women to work out their own solutions, and there were those who considered it.

"Calvin," Luke hollered to the greatest flight risk amongst his charges. "Down toward the church," was just the best place to let the fool lead the pack. "Women in the middle," he ordered, pulling his revolver out of its holster. Felt the weight of it in his hand, saw how it gleamed orange in the suddenly leaping flames from the structure they'd just abandoned, liked the way his finger notched into the trigger, as if the gun had been built just for him. Which it hadn't; it belonged to a dead man who had taken it from a dead man before that. A gun with a legacy all its own and it didn't care how many other dead men it left behind either.

Horses whinnied somewhere, screaming set up from the other side of Monroe Street where the mercantile was. Not much, hardly enough of a reaction for the way the brothel had been torched by some manner of alcohol-fueled explosion, probably starting with a whiskey bottle.

"The horses," came from a nervous Yellow-eye, sticking close to his side, but the whinny came from the stable down toward the courthouse.

"They're gone," he answered with certainty, because one way or another, they were. Most likely rustled, but if not, there was a fireball between man and beast and not a one of them could cross it. Not now. "Get in there," he told his scout with a sharp nudge. In the center of the clump of outlaws, closer to the women, better protected there. Meanwhile the rest of Luke's men took to the periphery and the whole bunch of them hustled down toward the church at the end of the street, guns poised in itchy fingers and just looking for any excuse to start roaring into the night.

But there was none. Nothing but citizens, clinging to safety at the edges of the street, hiding in doorways and behind thin lace curtains in the rooms over the store. Then there was the urgency of some of the more reputable men gathering to start a bucket brigade, and finally old Pastor Jesse opening the church doors to admit his flock for the night, sullied as they were: twenty-four fallen women, one madam, and a ragtag band of thirteen fighters who had chosen the side of Cap Porter in a feud that was older than most of them.

"Come in, come in," the pastor offered magnanimously, full of blessings for all, no matter how unlikely it was that they'd ever set foot in his church again, that they'd ever kneel or fold their hands in prayer. "Come where it's safe. Won't nothing ever hurt you here, not in this house," the old man promised.

Rumor had it that Jesse had been a Confederate soldier in his younger days, had seen more men die and buildings burn than any of them could count. Luke couldn't swear to the truth of any of that part, but he knew the man had a tumultuous past. One that intersected with Luke's own at the least likely points, but the pastor was reformed now. Had earned every white hair in that long beard of his the hard way and now it was his aim to teach others what he'd learned.

Luke, at the end of the line of escapees from the fire that raged on the next block, got a shaken head and the click of a tongue against teeth from the old pastor. A hand out to take his gun from him and, "Get in here, boy," came the command when Luke was the only one who hadn't passed through the church doors to the relative safety of the sanctuary.

"Can't," he answered back, and there was scolding in his head about how you didn't talk to a man of the cloth that way. You did what he said and you thanked him for any reproach you got, because it meant he cared enough to try to save your pitiful soul. Except Luke was pretty sure there was nothing left of his soul to be saved anyway. "Got to keep watch."

A snort, so unbecoming a man meant to minister to the needs of others. "Watch what?"

Watch the wood frame of an old house, which had housed women who had little alternative to the life they lived, burn. Watch the haven that had been one of his few escapes from his own miserable existence crumble into embers. Watch the night pass while men better than him kept the rest of the block from succumbing to the flames. Watch each spark fly and remember another night like this.

"Luke," the pastor said, and he was maybe the only man in these parts who would dare to call him by his given name. "Your father wouldn't want you out here like this."

Well that was just too damn bad, wasn't it? Because his father wasn't here to stop him.

"You go on in there with the rest of them," Luke counseled. "Maybe there's one or two that'll even let you save them." Like silly Emery who would get all pale and prayerful when there was danger lurking, but forget whatever piousness he might have attained the minute he entered Miss Mabel's house of ill-repute to find himself in the arms of that black-haired, heavy chested and utterly misnamed little darling, Chastity. "Me, I got work to do."

"You're a fool," he got informed, but he heard the heavy wooden doors of the church creak closed, tucking the old man inside with the rest of them. Leaving him out here to scan the street for any sign, but there was none. No blonde-headed simpleton just begging to be shot, no shadows that didn't belong. Not a single man that wasn't an upstanding member of the community, not a trace of the bandits who had tried to kill him and his men tonight, demolishing the home of women whose fathers and brothers had already fallen to the nonsense that had gripped this corner of Georgia since before he was born. He stayed out all night and never once saw a member of the Hickory gang anywhere near the church.


	2. New Kid in Town

**_Author's note:_** _The last section introduced you to a member of the Porter gang, and this one will introduce you to a Hickory gang member. After this the sections may not came as quickly - work is killing me. I just thought it was only fair for me to be impartial in this little feud and give you a glimpse into both sides._

_Once again, __this story was also published on AO3 because it was originally written with lyric epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Ffdotnet doesn't want those lyrics there, and I can respect that. However, I felt that the lyrics were important to the way in which the story developed. Hence the cross-posting, with a link to the original version on my ffdotnet profile (scroll down)._

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><p><strong>2. New Kid in Town<strong>

In his short life he'd held a sword and a saber, he'd nocked arrows and wielded knives, he'd launched acorns from a slingshot and maybe once or twice he'd been desperate enough to throw rocks. But the best weapon in his arsenal, and he'd stand by this under the threat of death, was his smile. It stopped friends and enemies, women, children and even lawmen in their tracks while they tried to figure out what he had up his sleeve that made him so happy when it was clear he ought to be running to save life and limb.

There wasn't much about his life that should make him smile, or so he'd been told. Lots of sad faces and hands patting his head, at least when it had been within easy patting range of the city's ladies. Now that he was tall he got those looks full of pity, but it was easy to grin right back into the face of them. If he had nothing to be happy about, he had nothing to be sad about either. Because he had precisely nothing in this world, and therefore nothing to lose.

"My, aren't you strong," came the singsong voice of the woman to his left. Strong, well sure, he had that. He had strength and his smile and the attention of this charming young not-quite-lady. And all those other things he didn't have, well he'd never had them, so he didn't miss them. Mostly. "You should come around here more often."

"Well, sweetheart, I just might," he answered back as he reached for the hammer. Tested its weight in his hand and got ready to swing it for real. He didn't have carpentry skills but he had brute strength and will and the attention of someone quite pleasant to look at, so he figured he could do a creditable job of constructing this here piece of furniture. "If you keep talking so pretty to me."

Blush on her cheeks, but before she could answer there was the cluck of a tongue. "Lily," Miss Mabel said from close, too close. Right behind them, and how the madam had managed to get up here without them hearing her – well he reckoned there was enough noise in this place that he shouldn't be too surprised. "You go on downstairs and see if you can be helpful." But the girl stood her ground against the order. A mind of her own and Bo supposed he appreciated that quality well enough. Almost as much as he appreciated the dimple in her left cheek and the way her loose blonde hair flowed down to help draw the eye to her low-cut bodice. "Babe—"

"Bo," he corrected. Mabel was a friend. No, Mabel was more than that, she was as much a part of his raising as any of them had been. Not a mother, but a kindly aunt, perhaps. He liked Mabel and maybe he owed her his life once or twice over. But that didn't give her the right to use that old nickname on him.

"—you just holler if you need help up here and I'll send one of the men up. Come on Lily," she prompted, but the girl stayed right where she was, her bosom jutted to give him the best view from where he was squatted down to bang the next nail. "Babe here," Miss Mabel went on pointedly. Sharp enough tone that Lily turned to pay attention to the madam and Bo decided against correcting her again. "Has got work to do. And is hardly more than a boy."

Which wasn't true at all. He was seventeen now, and just about as grown as he was going to get. He could look down and see the dust on the brim of most men's hats, and he'd been on his own, more or less, for over two years. He earned his keep where he could, slept in alleys when necessary and if Miss Mabel had taken him in when he was sick and fevered, then nursed him back to health a few times over the span of those years, that didn't make him a boy. He'd won the right to be called a man.

But the clacking of shoes on wood as Mabel led the fine-featured Lily away indicated how little she wanted to belabor the point. Besides, it was too late now. Once Mabel declared him off limits to one of her girls, well, the poor thing ought to have sense enough to follow simple instructions. If there was one thing the madam did, it was to see that the town's young women without means got good meals and a roof over their heads and there wasn't anyone else that would give them that. Sure, they had to work to earn it, and they had to obey the madam's sometimes frustrating rules, but the alternative was wasting away in the streets. And Bo knew enough about that.

He'd been born, obviously. Sometime, somewhere, he'd come into the world, but there was no one left who could state the particulars. His life, as far as anyone knew it, began the day he was found on the steps of the church. That was back when Reverend Webster had been in the pulpit, an improbably impatient man, skinny and nervous, having no particular use for children. At least not until they got old enough to sit quietly through a service. The reverend had wasted no time in transferring the little bundle that had greeted him that morning into the arms of Misses Mitchell, the wife of an elder in the church, and a woman who had taken to volunteering at the Sheridan Orphans Home out of the goodness of her heart. And that was where he'd wound up, after a trip to the doctor to pronounce him a healthy, if hungry, approximately six month old boy.

So all anyone knew about him for sure was that he'd been born in eighteen hundred seventy-seven, probably in spring, and that a piece of paper wrapped up in the blanket he'd been found in had the name "Beauregard" written on it in a shaky and unpracticed hand.

His parents, apparently, hadn't been able to feed or care for him, but they'd been able to leave him with a dreadful moniker.

Not that it mattered. There were four ladies who worked in the home, and then another half-dozen volunteers, and every last one of them called him "the baby." He could remember that part; maybe it counted as his first memory that was all his own, not someone telling him what he'd done or been like. Hearing himself called a baby when by then there were plenty of kids in the home that were younger than him. Real babies, the kind that couldn't walk or talk or be helpful by sweeping floors and washing clothes, but he was the one they couldn't stop calling "the baby." Eventually the live-in cook and sometime disciplinarian, Miss Lavinia, had taken a bit of pity on him and shortened it to Babe. If he didn't care for the name Beauregard, he absolutely hated Babe and had tried for most of his life to get people to call him Bo. It had never stuck.

"Hey." Mabel was back, alone this time. No girls at her side because Bo would always be the baby to her. She'd never worked in the orphanage, but Mabel claimed her own part in his raising. "You sure this is a good idea, Babe?" When he'd gotten big enough that he couldn't justify eating at the orphanage table because there'd never been enough food to go around in the first place, he'd taken to the streets. All of fifteen, and he could read a little and write just enough to sign his name—Beauregard Sheridan, because he'd come without a surname, and all the kids that belonged to nobody got given the orphanage's name as if it were their own—and he was tall. Not strong yet, but he could pass for older than he was. He'd worked at the blacksmith's when the mines had gotten reopened and more folks moved into the area. When that dried up he'd done day labor where he could, getting hired to help on farms and in the mill here and there. Breaking horses for men to sell to other men, because there had yet to be a beast that could throw him. Most nights he'd slept next to the back porch of the hotel and restaurant, scavenging a meal from the ladies in the kitchen. But enough nights had been spent in the brothel on Monroe Street, the building that had burned two nights ago. Not as a guest of one of the girls, but under the watchful eye of Miss Mabel herself, who fancied herself some sort of caretaker for him. "You ain't got no place else you'd better be?"

"I'm fine, Mabel," he assured her. "And you need the help. Besides, you girls is neutral territory."

"Didn't seem that way the other night," Mabel sighed back at him.

He hadn't known, two nights ago, the whole plan. He'd been given a task and it had been simple enough. Illegal but harmless, or at least there'd been no blood, no death involved. All he knew was that he was to relieve certain Porter gang members of their horses while they were busy enjoying the hospitality of the brothel. A mere inconvenience, a loss of transportation and everyone knew he could ride right down the middle of Monroe Street, help himself to those horses and get them back out to the old Wright Ranch—where the Hickory gang was holing up these days—with hardly any effort at all. So he'd done it with that smile that did more to keep him alive than any gun ever had, and later he'd heard the explosion, the yelling, and seen the flames licking at the sky.

"I'm sorry," he said, finding his way up to his feet.

"I know it wasn't your fault, Babe," the madam offered. "And I reckon it's going to work out all right. I never was too fond of being situated halfway between the church and the courthouse anyway. Bad for business," she joked.

"You girls is supposed to be off-limits," he repeated. She could make light all she wanted, and she could see the bright side. It had taken only a day for her to arrange for new rooms for the whole bunch of her girls in a fine location. Just over the saloon where they could help the old owner and bartender, 'Doc' Appleby, mix drinks and then woo the men they'd helped to intoxicate right on up the stairs where they'd relieve them of a week's pay for a night's festivities. It would all work out very advantageously, but it should never have happened this way.

"I don't reckon we were the target," Mabel said with a wave of her hand. Went to sit on the rim of the bedframe, but Bo grabbed her elbow. Not enough nails in there to make it stable yet. He and the other men around here still had a lot of work to do to make this place into a home for the girls instead of just barren rooms. "And I suppose it ain't no secret that Ruby is Duke's girl." No, it sure wasn't. And being the chosen concubine of a lieutenant on the Porter side of the feud made the girl a target for the Hickory side and a liability for Mabel. Bo guided the madam over to a stack of lumber along the wall. It wasn't a proper chair, but it would do for now. He watched her settle there before taking a seat himself.

"You could cut her loose," Bo suggested. "And let Duke take care of her. Marry her and make her an honest woman."

That idea just got him laughed at. "That boy wouldn't know the first thing about taking care of her. Oh, don't look so scandalized," Mabel added, her hand coming up and almost, but not quite, ruffling his hair like she used to when he was a hungry kid hanging around on her stoop. Caught herself and patted him on the shoulder instead. "He's no more a grown man than you are."

"He'd a legend," Bo asserted. "Him and that weird Yellow-eye…" well it was rumored that they could track and kill a man over the sheer cliffs of mountains and across rushing rivers.

"He's a boy, and a fool. And he ain't," she insisted, fingers gripping his chin to make him look at her, "no one to go getting in awe of, Babe. He's just a youngster with a gun and the trust of an angry old man who's clinging to a grudge like it's gold instead of poison. Duke being a good gunfighter and leader don't make him a full grown man any more than your mustache makes _you_ a full grown man," she informed him. He cocked his head back—didn't mean to, but couldn't help it—and looked down his own cheeks to catch sight of the fuzz there on his pursed upper lip. Wiggled it back and forth and smiled, which got him socked on the upper arm. "Oh you're something, boy. No chance of you shaving that thing off?"

"No ma'am." She could announce all she wanted that it didn't make him all grown up, and he couldn't bring himself to care whether she was right about that or not. It made him feel rough and ready, and furthermore, he just plain liked it.

"You keep wiggling it like that and it might just fall off all on its own. Best you trim it, at least, so it don't get no ideas about taking over your whole face." He just smiled for her again, because mustache or no, she couldn't resist when he flashed his teeth at her. "I wish you boys—all of you—would quit this feuding and do something worthwhile with yourselves."

"I am," he reminded her, getting to his feet then offering a hand down. She couldn't be that old, really. Maybe thirty, maybe less. Her hair, though she wore it in a teased-up knot at the top of her head, was plenty lustrous and a deep brown without any unwanted streaks of gray. Her skin was soft, but her eyes were tired and her shoulders didn't quite square off like those of the younger girls' in her care. Not so much sass in the way she stood. "I'm building beds." Which would have to be awfully sturdy to support the shenanigans that would go on in them, and he really ought to get back to it if he was even going to get one done before the day had passed.

"Babe," she said, holding onto his hand to keep him right where he was. "I know you ain't had nothing to do with what happened the other night. You ain't got to pay no penance or nothing like that."

If that didn't leave a man with guilt. He hadn't known what was coming, had been tidily out of the way when the worst of it got to happening. But that didn't mean he bore no responsibility.

"I ain't—I don't know much." He admitted. "I ain't even ever met old man Hickory." Or Ol' Nut, as he was known around these parts, but Bo figured it would be hypocritical for him to go calling the man by a nickname he probably hated. "I ain't nothing but the new kid in the gang." And he wasn't even sure he counted as that much, yet. Mostly he was just hanging out with Leadbelly, a fellow who had a couple of years on him and had taken Bo under his wing. Not even a friend, really, just a mentor of sorts. "But if I hear anything about anyone doing anything to this place, I'll let you know." If he had enough time. Otherwise he'd have to do some fast talking (and big smiling) to try to convince whoever it was out of their intentions to hurt a bunch of women that hadn't ever done anything but brought pleasure to the men of the region. "Come on," he said, taking his hand out of hers. "I got work to do that's going to take a while. Unless you want to send Miss Lily," or any one of the other girls, really. A lot of them had the names of flowers, then there were the gem stones and a couple had normal names like the girls in the orphanage used to have. "Back up here to help out."

"Bo." That stopped him from where he was headed over to pretend he knew anything about carpentry, made him pause and look at the madam. "Don't be in such a hurry," was the kind of thing a lady said when she was flirting, but Mabel wouldn't do that, not with him. Not when she was telling him that he was no more than a little boy with a big moustache. "To get tangled up in the feud, to grow up. To get with my girls. It ain't as glamorous as it looks." She patted his arm, and let him go back to his hammer and nails. "You're so sweet, you don't need to go getting all hard and mean like Hickory and Porter, like Duke. You're better than that."

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, gave her one more smile, then set to work.


	3. Midnight Flyer

**_Author's note:_**_ All right, so by now there's no doubt that this story takes place in 1894, but what I don't comes up until this chapter is that it takes place in Dade County, Georgia, which unlike Hazzard, is a real place. I know, it's kind of sacrilege to put the Dukes anyplace other than Hazzard. But Dade has such an interesting history of its own and it's loosely where I tend to imagine Hazzard being anyway. The town of Trenton is also real. So, yeah, it might be a little disruptive to everyone that the story mentions Dade and Trenton, but maybe we can all imagine that these places become the town and county of Hazzard some day._

_And changing the setting a little bit doesn't take away the huge debt of gratitude that I owe to the creators of Dukes, who gave me the characters to borrow and place into these unfamiliar surroundings. So thanks to them, and also thanks to y'all for reading and chatting and enjoying the Dukes as much as I do.  
><em>

_Reminder,_ _this story was also published on AO3 because it was originally written with lyric epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Ffdotnet doesn't want those lyrics there, and I can respect that. However, I felt that they were important to the way in which the story developed. Hence the cross-posting, with link on my profile._

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><p><strong>3. Midnight Flyer<strong>

Sometimes disasters were for the best. In those little moments between the bigger ones, where he could find his own peace in solitude. He wasn't supposed to be here, to be alone and quiet with only his own thoughts, but that was where disaster came in.

He was supposed to have a horse.

(_"It wasn't your fault," Cap had told him with an odd gentleness for the patriarch of a feuding family. "They crossed the line. It's good that you didn't let anyone get killed." The sun had angled in from the windows in the sitting room, cutting through the lace curtains to leave a dappled design on the wooden floor. The Porter house was a grand affair, with a wide porch doing laps around its outside and fine furniture on the inside. Well kept, for the most part, and spacious. A castle, though it lacked for turrets and a moat._

_Luke had stood alone in front of the older man, watching his hair turn gray and crow's feet tap dancing around the corners of his eyes._

"_You did a good job, boy." Strange man, this Cap Porter, who could pat Luke on the shoulder and all but comfort him like he was a lost little boy with one breath—"Only way it could have been better is if you had killed you some Hickorys,"—then order him to commit murder with the next._)

But that was disaster for you. Sneaking right up and staking its claim on your life the minute you got lazy.

Or stupid. He'd lain there with Ruby's hand in his hair, stroking and soothing like she was his mother, until he'd been halfway asleep. Just drifting along on thoughts or memories, pictures behind his eyelids of a better life while Babe Sheridan had trotted right on up to the front of the brothel and unhitched his horse and the sundry others that'd been lashed there. Disappeared with them while the rest of the Hickory gang lit the old wood structure up into a crazy bonfire, then did their own disappearing act.

A disaster of his own making. He was the one who had led the ragtag group of a dozen-plus-one men into town, who'd given them the night to do as they pleased, who'd watched with a silly smirk on his face as they didn't hesitate or collaborate or even bother with pretenses of doing anything else, they'd just trooped in a line up onto Miss Mabel's porch. And since that was his destination too, he'd just lashed his own horse then trudged right in after them. Left Yellow-eye to keep an eye on things, because the scout had nothing better to do in a whorehouse, and settled into a night off from the perils of the feud.

Town was what it always had been, crowded, dusty, a clump of buildings blocking the horizon and taking up space like so many lonely cowboys all crowded around one campfire. No place Luke ever much favored being, but it was safe. Or it was supposed to be.

(_"They crossed the line, son. I've got all the faith in the world that you know you've got to do next," Cap said, those icy blue-gray eyes fixing on his. _

_Funny how the older man looked to him to sort these things out. How he called him son, though Luke wasn't technically of Porter blood. Cap liked to tell tales of having been a captain in the Confederate Army, but he hadn't. He liked to say he was the richest man in three cities, but he wasn't that, either. And he liked to believe that he had three perfectly bright sons, but what he had was a trio of dolts. Sure, Ephraim, Andrew and Tobias were high-ranking in the fool's army they had going here. Probably, if it came down to some sort of inside skirmish for power, Cap would find on the side of one of his own flesh and blood over Luke. But as long as peace among ranks reigned, Luke got all the choice assignments that the leader of the gang doled out. Which meant the riskiest ones, of course. _

"_I got Yellow-eye watching them now." Which probably wasn't too hard a task, what with Hickory gang members strutting up and down the streets of Trenton with clear pride of ownership. _

"_That boy's a strange one," Cap mused. "But there ain't no one half as good at spying on the enemy."_)

The enemy. Cap had been in the War Between the States, that much was true. Skinny little thing, to hear old Pastor Jesse tell it, barely thirteen. Banged a steady beat on his snare, but he'd never wielded anything more deadly than a drumstick in those days. Captain of the drum corps, in charge of making sure the real soldiers had a rhythm to march to and reasonably good morale when they got to the battlefield where they were more than likely to get shot.

The Yankees had been the enemy, Luke was fully willing to agree with that notion. They'd marched right on down here and burned what they couldn't kill, destroyed for no other reason than to show their dominance, then left a shambles in their wake. Georgia was still reeling under the violence done to her. And strutting toward a confrontation with those Yankees, whether a fellow was carrying a gun or a drum, counted as either crazy or brave. Could be that Cap was a little bit of both.

The Hickorys were not the same as Yankees. Not in all ways, anyway, though their love for fire made Luke want to hate them a little bit more. Mostly they were a disorganized bunch of men fighting for—

Well, Cap said it started over a horse. Or not a horse, but a mule advertised as a horse. Which Cap had bought from Ol' Nut Hickory. He'd paid horse prices, what he'd gotten was a mule and Hickory hadn't ever made things right. So it came to shooting, Cap's young wife had been caught in the crossfire, and had died with a baby in her belly. No restitution was made and… that was Cap's story. But there were others that went back further than that. Folks claimed that there never had been any livestock trading hands between Hickorys and Porters, because they'd been sworn enemies long before 1885, which was when the supposed bad deal had gone down.

The feud had started, some said, with the secession of Dade County from the union, back in '60. Jumped the gun and bailed out before the state of Georgia had gotten around to it. Which made for a good story, but no one could attest to it being true. All anyone knew for sure was that Cap's daddy had put a lot of pressure on the powers that be to make a bold statement to the state and the rest of the country about what Georgia would not tolerate, and that Josiah Hickory had advocated for caution. The two had set to bickering, but they weren't any different from the rest of the folks around here. Some thought Dade ought to secede from the whole thing and become its own country, and others said that they'd go broke if they did that. The mine that supported most of the county was all well and good, but it would become useless if factories in Georgia wouldn't buy the coal that came out of it. And the cotton growers wouldn't be able to sell their crops, either.

Factions had set up, but then the war had come anyway and it got hard to know or care who had wanted to secede first. After the Yankees came and left, everything centered around trying to put the town and the state back together again, and no one could be sure whether it was horses and mules that started the feud or whether it was old resentments from long before most of the current combatants were born.

Luke didn't know, any more than the rest of them did, where the feud emerged from, all fully grown and vicious. He just knew he wasn't supposed to be fighting in it.

Just like he wasn't supposed to be alone now, strolling up old Gray Voice Lane and plotting his next move in this feud he wasn't meant to be fighting. Gray Voice Lane – no one knew quite what it meant, only that his baby brother Jud had come in the house one day, talking about "gray voices" calling to him from the rutted trail that ran off Main Street then meandered and split until it passed the Duke farm. It was a day of heavy fog, the train whistles echoing eerily off the mountains as they brought supplies in and shipped coal out. Meanwhile, the Daughtreys in the farm to the west had been planting their crops and their disembodied chatter might have made its way to the five-year-old's ears. Whatever the cause, the boy had been emphatic about those gray voices, and with only the Duke and Daughtrey farms fronting on it, there had been no real objections to registering the dusty trail as Gray Voice Lane when the postal service came surveying.

These days the lane wound through overgrown thickets and brambles, nothing more than a lonely dirt patch with no voices, gray or otherwise, anywhere along it. All that was left of two farms was half rotted fence posts and some cleared land. Tassled weeds bending in the wind and Luke picked one, stuck the stem in his mouth. Savored the sweet flavor of his boyhood.

(_"My boy," Cap Porter had said, but Luke wasn't precisely his boy. He was the son of Matthew Harmon Duke. Then again, he might not mind Cap thinking of him like a son. Or more accurately, son-in-law. Because long ago, in an innocent time, when there'd been a schoolhouse up on Wildflower Hill that he'd walked to every day between fall's harvest and spring's planting season, Luke had played at courting sassy but pretty Miss Mary Kaye Porter. Time had passed but his feelings for the honey blonde, blue-eyed girl hadn't. Even if she was, at the moment, with child. Another man's child, a Hickory gang member's child. A fool's child, a coward's child. An overgrown boy's child, the scoundrel wasn't even man enough to pretend to face her father and ask for her hand. Far as anyone could tell he didn't want her hand, didn't want anything more than what he'd already gotten from her. Luke would marry her and make her an honest woman. If Cap would hear of it, but he wouldn't. He just kept Mary Kaye closed into an upstairs bedroom and hushed anyone who dared speak of her._

"_You know what you have to do," was how Cap finished his instructions on the nature of strategy in this here feud._)

To the left were what had once been cornfields, to the right, the pastures. The train whistle still echoed off the mountains to the east. The Dukes hadn't had much, but the land had been homesteaded for generations, acres and acres of it. The Daughtreys had come later and been good neighbors. Luke heard that after that terrible night they'd packed up what they could and headed over the hills to Walker County, a more civilized region. He hoped the decision had yielded good things for them.

His own family hadn't been the kind to run. Or to get involved in feuds.

"Fighting," his father had told him, "is for them that ain't got the strength to make a living from using their back, and ain't got the smarts to make a living from their brains. Lucky for you, boy, us Dukes got both."

So the family of four had stood separate from the feud that raged all around them. Had watched the town divide itself over everything and nothing, had shaken their heads then bent over their hoes and ploughs and kept to themselves. Had sowed and reaped and then brewed their crop into something a little bit special. Had sold their resulting product to anyone that had a dollar to spare, no matter whether they were a Porter, a Hickory, a squatter up in the hills or the owner of a right-and-proper saloon. Had congratulated themselves on their wise business sense and laughed at the poor feuders who really thought that fighting would get them anywhere at all. And then laughed some more, because feuding made men the sort of thirsty that only Duke whiskey could quench. And, as a side benefit, their fine brew made for a pretty decent sterilizer for battle-inflicted wounds.

Yep, his daddy had been smart, and they'd benefited off the feud plenty, even as they'd looked down their noses at it.

Until his mama took sick in the winter of eighteen eighty-nine, and didn't get better. His pa tended her until she died, then he took to the comforts of his own liquor. At fifteen, Luke had been mature and strong enough to tend to the farm while his father mourned. Had to give up school but that was mostly all right. He reckoned he had a better education than most moonshine whiskey makers by then, and the only loss was that he didn't get to see a lot of Mary Kaye Porter anymore. Little brother Jud wasn't quite yet thirteen and had the temperament of a mule, but Luke could wrangle him just like he wrangled the cows, and for a while, he made it work.

But by the summer of eighteen ninety, his pa still hadn't come around, and Jud had gotten clever enough to sneak off on his own whenever Luke turned his back. Sure, he came back every evening and helped around the farm some, but he was gone more than he was home.

It took another year, and then some more. By then, Luke had stood in front of his pa and told him that if he wanted more liquor, well, he'd have to get his wits about him and brew it himself, because Luke couldn't do it all anymore. Sure, he'd been holding it together, but that was only because he'd been lumping Duke wares in with that of the crazy mountain man, Jesse. Everyone knew of old Jesse, everyone always had. He'd been hanging around the outskirts of town, looking scraggly, mean and older than his years since Luke's daddy was a boy. He was also a fine whiskey maker and an old family friend – at least as much as his half-feral life would allow him to be friends with anybody. Luke felt safe enough working with him but with Jud halfway absent, it was too much. He'd turned to his pa and just about given the man an order to straighten up because what was left of his family needed him.

Luke figured it hadn't worked, but one day his pa joined him in the fields, tending to the corn. Not for long, but he was there. The next day he'd come out to help feed the livestock at dawn, and sometime after that he'd taken to tending the still again. When Luke had gone up into the hills to tell old Jesse that he wouldn't be asking him for help anymore, the grizzled man had smiled and nodded like he'd expected nothing less. Wished him well and sent him back down to take care of his family and their land.

One night soon after, Jud hadn't made it home. The next day they found him in the pasture, bloody and beaten. He had a head wound that looked like he'd been just about scalped, but when they got the teen inside and cleaned up, it turned out not to be so bad. He also had some buckshot in his backside, but when Luke rode to town and brought the Doc back with him, the medical advice was to leave the shrapnel where it lay.

"He's young, he'll heal," was the summation.

Next, they'd summoned Marshal Coltrane, though Luke had known it was pointless.

"I can't go arresting the whole town," the lawman had asserted. "When he's ready to say who did this to him, you come get me again. I can't be waiting here all day until the boy comes to his senses." Of course he couldn't. He had three cities to police and about two-thousand people to keep from killing one another. Hard enough without two feuding families that insisted on warring regardless of the marshal's attempts to stop them.

And Jud had been stubborn. Wouldn't say who'd hurt him, only that Luke and his pa were fools if they really thought they could stay neutral in the feud. Their pa had promised Jud that the minute his backside got healed it'd be whipped raw if the boy didn't straighten out.

But it never came to that.

Two nights later there'd been the tinkling of broken glass, a hiss and a pop and the smell of smoke. Luke had run from the house thinking that the barn was burning. It was, but it took until he got out into the crisp air for him to realize that the house was engulfed as well. He'd hollered for his pa, for his brother, might even have called out for his ma, though she was buried in the family cemetery on the hill. Had run for the house, but gotten caught up in something. Fought against it, tried to get free, but he couldn't.

"Settle down, boy," got panted in his ear, and he realized he was being held back by a surprisingly strong crazy mountain man. Jesse. "There ain't no hope for them," which went to prove the old-timer was insane. Of course there was hope for his family, if only Luke could get to them. "They're already gone, and if you go back in there, you will be too."

"No!" he'd screamed, trying again to get free, but the heavy-set man had a strength born of a hard life. It was nothing a seventeen year old youngster could hope to match. By the time the marshal arrived with his ragtag posse, Luke was nothing more than a boy brought to his knees, watching through unnaturally wet eyes as everything he'd ever known burned.

Each moment since that day had been spent trying to figure out who had done this to his family. He'd picked up work unloading supply trains that arrived in the Trenton Station, and gotten himself a room at Miss Tisdale's boarding house in town. He'd nosed around and asked anyone who would talk to him what they knew. It hadn't worked, but it had given him purpose. Come summer, when he should have been tending to the corn crop on a farm on Gray Voice Lane, he'd been searching dead end alleys for three months. It was then that Yellow-eye recruited him to join the Porter gang, and he gave in because he had figured was the best way to determine who had killed his family. From the inside.

Over two years later, he still didn't know. But the cinder pile where the brothel used to be was the best clue he had yet. And Luke reckoned that even though he was still too smart to be feuding like this, he had probably picked the right side to join. He was more sure than ever that it was some portion of the Hickory gang that had set fire to the house that had once stood on this beautiful parcel of land. It ought to come as a surprise to no one at all when he killed them, whoever they were. And when he got hanged for the crime, it would be fine. Sure, he'd be leaving Mary Kaye Porter here among the living, but he'd be joining the rest of his family in eternal rest.


	4. Heartache Tonight

**4. Heartache Tonight**

He'd been young once, full of ambitions and ideals, dreams and aspirations about the mark he was going to leave on this corner of the world. Back then his body had been unscarred and strong and he had been at least somewhat handsome, to hear his mama tell it. He knew what it was to feel his blood rushing, hot and thick like it couldn't stand to be pent up inside him or hemmed in by useless skin and was just dying to get out any way it could. Or he had once; now it was all a memory worn smooth and dull by decades of trying to create peace out of chaos.

He had aged and gained experience. He knew a thing or two that a boy half his age hadn't had time to figure out. His body might have rusted in spots, gotten creaky and become slow to rouse from rest, but he could still handle any whippersnapper that thought it was a good idea to issue a challenge to the marshal and duly constituted law of this county.

His nose was wider than it had once been, kind of crooked and bulbous after that hit it had taken from the butt of Digger Jackson's gun back in eighty-six. But if it was bigger, it was also stronger, more sensitive. It could smell trouble a mile away.

Or right in front of it; he'd known this was coming. That it had to happen.

Most of the time he dealt with remnants. The leftovers, the parts that were too messy to clean up quickly and move on. He got called out to see dead men where they lay and to acknowledge that a crime had clearly taken place. There'd be demands from weeping mothers that he do something, but dead men didn't tell tales and there was no one living who was willing to point a finger. Just rumors of Porters or Hickorys, and he couldn't do much of anything with that.

What he could smell now, strong as gunpowder, and feel deeper than his soul, was a young man's need for vengeance, to assert dominance. It wouldn't be tidy and it wouldn't happen on the secluded corner of someone's wooded property, either. There would be blood on his streets.

He hadn't exactly planned on being the marshal of a feud-torn town. His mama and sisters hadn't wanted him to be a marshal at all. "You'll get yourself killed," Lulu had mourned in that tone that set dogs to barking from here to the far side of Lookout Ridge. The silly girl had no idea what went into being a marshal. Not that he had back then, either, but he'd known that amongst them, Lulu, Hortense and his mama could eat as much as a horse, and he'd also known that food didn't grow on trees. Or, he knew that some kinds of food did, but he didn't own any of those trees, wouldn't know where to find those kinds of trees, and wouldn't have known what to do if that sort of a tree got handed to him.

His daddy had been a banker, had an instinct for numbers and could add large sums in his head. Had done well by his family, owning a big house and fine clothes and pretty much spoiling them all too much for any other life. Hortense was too ornery to marry and seemed mighty proud of that fact, while Lulu held out romantic dreams, but by now Rosco figured she was too old to make them come true.

Their daddy had gone on to his great reward shortly after the end of the war and the ensuing dearth of money in the crippled region, leaving behind no use of his skills or talents. It had fallen to Rosco to keep the females in his family in clothing and food (and he'd had to sell the old homestead and rent them a cheap set of rooms in town) when he was little more than an adventurous boy himself. He didn't know a hoe from a plough, so farming was out. He broke out in a rash when he got too near a pit of coals (or maybe it was the flames themselves that made his skin prick up) so he wouldn't be a blacksmith, and the mines had been shut down for a decade or two after the war.

Meanwhile, the town had lacked for a lawman. It was pretty simple math; he didn't even need his daddy to do the sum for him. Besides, he'd figured on chasing off bad sorts that wandered into this secluded corner of the state and thought it was ripe for the picking. He'd never imagined that he'd be protecting his citizens from each other.

At least he'd picked up some instincts along the way, along with a bulbous, crooked nose that could smell trouble and knew exactly where to wait to watch it play out.

And there it was. The Duke boy, standing right in the middle of Main Street, just as brave as any nineteen-year-old fool could be. Simply waiting, with all the patience in the world.

Rosco waited with him, or near him, silent and undetected. In the shadows of the milliner's porch, where the Duke boy wouldn't bother to look, because the whole of his attention was on the front of the saloon.

After awhile that fortitude paid off, when staid old Thackeray ambled out of the saloon's swinging doors and stepped down into the street, perfectly pressed and upright as ever. Doing his usual impression of being a fine, law abiding citizen and he wasn't fooling anyone. Especially not Rosco.

"Thackeray," Duke called, but there was no need. Standing in the middle of an otherwise empty street where the gaslights illuminated his lean, powerful body, Luke Duke was as obvious as a wart on a frog. Or a toad; Rosco never could remember which of those ugly critters had warts. "You don't want to do that," the boy added when Thackeray reached for his breast pocket. The man was an odd one, dressed in a perfect tweed suit and jacket in contrast to the near rags that most of the feuders wore. Top hat too, instead of a Stetson, tidy little tie and the smallest and shiniest pistol Rosco had ever seen, tucked into his breast pocket rather than a revolver in a holster. It was amazing, really, that Thackeray was still alive, but then he never seemed to be the center of the action. He and the Duke boy had vastly different ways of leading their feuding factions. "I ain't armed," Duke announced, and dang it all if the fool wasn't, "but I got plenty of men tucked into corners up and down this street just waiting to take your head off if you so much as try to get at your gun."

The Duke boy had his pride and he had a whole passel of men to look out for. There was no avoiding this confrontation, not when the Hickory gang had tried to burn a bunch of Porter men alive in the brothel last week, and had been strutting around town like a conquering army ever since.

But though Thackeray dressed immaculately and gave every impression of being a fine gentleman, Luke Duke was the better man. He had waited until Sunday night when the streets would be empty, and he was—insane as the notion might be—actually going to try to negotiate with one of the Hickory lieutenants instead of shooting him in cold blood.

Thackeray, of course, wasn't having any of it. He just kept right on reaching for that gun until a bullet pinged into the cobblestones and dirt at his feet, making him jump and lose his balance. The Duke boy didn't even flinch, just offered a hand down to where Thackeray was sitting on his backside in the dust. The shot had come from somewhere over Rosco's head, probably the roof of the millinery, and had most likely been fired off by that scrawny Yellow-eye. That was one funny-looking boy, dressed in loose rags and he didn't have much heft for fighting skin on skin. Then again, maybe that didn't matter, what with that fine aim he had; his shot didn't miss Thackeray's boot sole by more than an inch or so.

"I reckon," Duke said, as he helped the older man back to a stand. "You owe me and those men that got their guns aimed at you an apology for what you done last week. And Miss Mabel, too. If you give us them apologies, and assurances that you won't pull no fool stunts like that again, you can walk away from here without any holes in you." It was a generous offer. Or would be, if Thackeray was the sort that liked the taste of crow. But anyone who could remain perfectly pressed and dustless in the middle of a long-term feud was the sort who would fight giving up any manner of control, tooth and nail.

"Well, my boy," came the answer, in perfectly pronounced tones. "That seems unlikely."

And it really did, because that one shot had cracked and echoed enough to bring those of Thackeray's men who had been carousing in the saloon up to the windows and swinging doors. Silence as Duke and Thackeray stared each other down, then the older man's pristinely manicured fingers snapped and the street erupted in percussive pops, bright flashes of light with a counterpoint of tinkling glass. Duke made a diving tumble behind the water trough in front of the Post Office and just look at that, how he was flanked by two of his own men back there, one of whom handed him a gun.

"All right, Thackeray," the youngster hollered. "I tried to do this the nice way." Then the muzzle of his gun lit up as he fired back at the Hickory boys in the saloon.

This, right here, was what Rosco knew had to happen. Blood on the streets of his town because Ol' Nut Hickory and Cap Porter were a pair of stubborn old men, still nursing bad feelings over perceived slights and old insults, a deal gone bad and maybe just leftover misery from a war that had taken its toll on the whole south. Whatever it was, those two men were safely tucked into soft beds while a bunch of overgrown boys, most of whom had little sense—of mortality, of peace, of a future, heck they just had little sense at all—did their fighting for them.

The marshal could at least be grateful that this little standoff was orchestrated by the Duke boy, who had made sure that there'd be a scarcity of innocent civilians around. That boy was a fine strategist and Rosco only wished he could count Duke as a member of his posse.

His _pitiful_ posse, when it came down to it. A bunch of them were cowering in the shop behind Rosco, staying closed behind walls and waiting for the signal to fire from their relatively safe locations. Rosco could only hope it wouldn't come to that.

He stepped off the porch that had held him protectively in its shadows; not far, just a couple of paces and well out of the line of fire. Tipped his hat up, swallowed a couple of times, rested his hands on the guns in either holster. "All right, you boys. Just cease and insist, I mean decease and cyst, I mean quit that now!" His tongue never did much listen to his brain, always mangling his words, but his voice was strong enough. Made the gunfire pause for all of a three-count before it started up again.

When he was these boys' age, he would have shown respect for a man with a badge. Of course, when he was these boys' age, a lot of men with badges were soldiers. He had to admit, he'd only respected the ones that wore gray.

"I'm serious, now!" he screamed out. "You boys just quit or my posse and me, we're just gonna blow you to bits." All right, so in truth he could count on exactly one member of his posse. Big Ed Little had come to him from worse places. He had broad shoulders, both of which had chips on them a mile wide, and a fearless nature that came from working the mines alongside imported prison labor. The man had lived a hard life and wasn't terribly afraid of being shot, either. "And then we're gonna lock you up in my jail," ping of a random bullet from somewhere in the saloon, but most of the fools were listening to him now. "And let you rot." Which was, to most of them, a greater threat than death. "I mean it, don't go messing with the law."

"Dang it, Marshal," Duke groused from his scant coverage behind the water trough, but he wasn't mad. He was just putting on a good show.

"All you boys, every last one of you, get out of my town," Rosco insisted. A collective groan went up from the saloon; those fellows in there figured on going right back to drinking once this little diversion was over. But old Doc Appleby would have no objections to Rosco sending them on their way. And the whores that had just moved to his second story would be happy to see this little battle broken up, too. They'd had enough excitement for one week. "You Porter boys head south and you Hickory boys head north, and if I see any of you for the next week, I'm gonna lock you up. I mean it now, I'm serious."

It was almost funny to watch the feuders stand up out of their crouched positions, to see them shake their heads and mumble all the dirty words they could muster, but to do what they were told like a bunch of scolded brats. Some of them hobbled, limped and clutched at parts of themselves and Rosco figured that both the apothecary on Front Street and the doctor up on Possum Hill would see a few visitors by dawn. But no one had to be carried, so all in all, it hadn't been a bad night.

For any of them, really. Duke's mission had been accomplished. He'd gotten the Hickorys kicked out of their very comfortable dominance of the town's streets. Thackeray had been out manned and out gunned, so he was lucky to escape with his life. And Rosco, well Rosco wouldn't have to get yelled at and beaten over the head by a parasol belonging to yet one more broken-hearted mother who had lost her boy to this stupid feud. The marshal took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and watched as the last of the stragglers from of two bands of lost and angry boys hobbled off to opposite ends of the street.


	5. Take the Devil

**_Author's note: _**_One of the fun parts of this story is how I get to keep fundamental personality traits of each character intact while simultaneously changing their lives drastically. And... that's all I'm going to say on that subject. _

_Hope you're having as much fun with it as I have been. I know it's weird and a touch unsettling to take characters out of their normal setting and plop them into a whole different time and place. Thanks for coming along on this odd little ride with me.  
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><p><strong>5. Take the Devil<strong>

"Well, if it ain't Bo Sheridan," he said, stifling a yawn. The morning sun was glinting off that blonde mop on the youngster's head, and there was no two ways about it. He might have spent half the night tending to wounds, but now it was daylight and there'd be no rest for him. "What are you doing here, you old cur?" Not that the boy was actually old, or a dog. But the doctor had known him since he was nothing more than a little tyke of an orphan. Poor boy had been just about smothered by women and needed a male influence; that was where he had inserted himself. "You sick?" The youngster had caught just about every illness that passed through the orphanage, and brought in a few of his own. He wasn't the sickest kid in the place, but he probably came close. Medicine worked only so well on him; seemed like what the child called Babe had really suffered from was acute loneliness.

Not that the ladies who ran the home hadn't fawned on him, of course. He'd been so angelic that they couldn't keep their hands off him, but he just took poorly to being an orphan. Odd for a kid who'd never known his parents.

"I ain't here for me, Doc Cooter. I brought a friend."

A friend. That was what he'd tried to be to the boy, a friend or a father or something that would ease the loneliness he carried in his heart. But for all that he was a genius when it came to the heart's (or any internal organ's) actual moving and working parts, he had no idea how to fix what was broken in the child known as Babe.

Miss Lavinia had tried, Lord knew she had. But one sad heart couldn't cure another, any more than pneumonia could cure measles. In the end they just caught each other's loneliness, breathed it in to their lungs and let it take hold there until Miss Lavinia passed away of consumption and Babe, well, he'd managed to grow up anyway. Learned, somehow or other, to smile, laugh, and hope for the best.

"Over here," the boy was saying, taking a few long strides to the steps of the front porch where he'd left another man who was caught somewhere between sitting and laying. Holding onto his head and moaning, but the once scrawny kid called Babe, who had grown into a strapping young man named Bo, just squatted down to shoulder the other man's weight. Grunted as they stood together, arms wrapped over each other's shoulders, and walked him up the steps to where Cooter stood.

"Leadbelly," Bo explained with complete earnestness, making Cooter stifle the laugh that wanted to bubble out of him. Leadbelly, indeed. These boys picked up nicknames and tried them on like spare overcoats. The kind of thing they imagined that they could just slide right back out of someday and return to the original owners as they went back to the lives they'd willfully walked away from. Back to being promising young men taking sweet and unsullied little ladies down to the apothecary for a sugary drink at the counter, a chance to peacefully sit there all gussied up in their Sunday best as if they hadn't spent these few years living in the dirt and filth, revolvers just about permanently affixed to their hands in case someone threatened them, or threatened to threaten them, or just walked down the wrong side of the street. Leadbelly, who had carefully cultivated the reputation of being ready to shoot a man just for looking at him cross-eyed, was still just Thomas Ledbetter's son, Ernst. Problem was that the foolish youngster hadn't figured out that if Leadbelly got himself shot, Ernst would die right along with him; none of the overgrown boys around here seemed to realize that. "Has a problem with his head," Bo finished up.

Yes, well, there was plenty of that going around.

These kids didn't know war, they didn't know destruction and loss. They were born into having nothing at all and maybe they figured they had nothing to lose. Maybe they were just playing war because they hadn't gotten to see the real thing, which had ruined their young lives before they had even gotten a chance to live them; maybe violence was born into them from the blood of the previous generation. Twenty-nine years since the War Between the States had ended, and most of the youngsters tangled up in the present day feud had been alive for less that twenty-five.

"All right, bring him in," Cooter offered, helping the Sheridan boy to shoulder the load. The Ledbetter boy was heavy, slow-moving, dense, but there was only the barest bit of blood on him. The doctor could be grateful for small mercies. He'd be scrubbing the blood of other men out of the linens on his cots for weeks to come. "What happened to you, boy?" he asked Thomas Ledbetter's youngster. Spoke loud and slow because the boy was clearly dazed.

Got silence and a slow drag of Ledbetter's unfocused hazel eyes in his general direction. Boy looked dizzy and that was the best of it.

"Cletus!" Cooter hollered. This could be a two-person job right here, and as helpful as the Sheridan boy wanted to be, Cooter would just as soon have his assistant back him up this time.

Bo laughed, so close to a little boy's giggle that for all its mirth, it was heartbreaking to hear. "He ain't that bad off, Cooter. He can answer you, he just ain't gonna." All the same, the doctor wasn't sorry when Cletus came on the hustle, carrying the bag of instruments. Not that Cooter planned any complicated operations, but toward the bottom of the bag there was a small vessel, a metal dish not as large as a chamber pot, but big enough. He handed it over to the Ledbetter boy.

"You get the urge to be sick," he instructed in his best brooking-no-nonsense voice. "You just do it into that."

The Sheridan boy giggled again, but he knew nothing of head injuries and how quickly they could turn into messes on the floor.

"He ain't that bad off," Bo repeated. "He didn't get shot or nothing. He just fell down the stairs." A grunt came from Ledbetter, some kind of signal that Bo should shut up now, but the youngster never had been one to keep quiet when there was a good story to tell. (Or to take anything so subtle as a hint—Bo Sheridan was big and loud and anything less than a brick dropping on his head wasn't likely to get his attention.) "See, old Leadbelly there was upstairs when last night's shooting started. With Marigold," or Lily or Posey or Daisy. Half the girls in the brothel used flowers for their names, though Cooter could remember seeing some of them as children, when they still lived with their parents and had names like Mary and Amelia. "And he forgot to pull up his breeches before he took to running." A more serious vocalization from Ernst, coming closer to actual words this time. "So he went down the stairs on his back, and smacked his head pretty good."

"All right," Cooter answered, hand in the air to wave Bo off before Ledbetter became of a mind to ignore the concussion he likely had, and took to beating on the younger boy. "Cletus, help me get Leadbel—Ernst here into the examination room. Bo, you wait right here."

Took more time to get the boy hefted into the room in question than to diagnose him. A good look at his eyes, a little scrubbing at the remnants of dried blood at the back of his head to get a clear view of the minor laceration there where his skull must have cracked against the edge of a step, an a quick check of the boy's mouth and tongue were all it took. A small concussion and a large hangover. Ernst would live.

"We got a bed?" he asked Cletus, who was a terrible apprentice. Clumsy as a two-year-old, slack-jawed stupid, and after eighteen months on the job he still didn't know the difference between a clamp and a spatula (and knowing how to use the tools of the trade was more important than studying all the anatomy books in the library), but he was all heart and brute strength besides, so as long as he wanted, Cletus could have himself a job as the medical assistant. Cooter just figured he couldn't die anytime too soon, not if it meant leaving his patients in Cletus' hands. He might even have to live forever. (He'd just have to figure out the right elixir for that.)

Cletus nodded that they did have a place to stick Ledbetter amongst the other injured, so he could sleep off whatever he needed to. There were, of course, some enemy fighters in some of those rooms, but none of them were up to feuding again just yet. Ledbetter had until dusk to get over what was ailing him, Cooter figured. After that, all bets for peace in the infirmary were off.

He ought to be thankful to the dang feud, he reckoned. It kept men like him in business. (Sort of, most of these fellows couldn't pay their bills, but their mothers and sisters would come by later with a chicken, either live, or if he was really lucky, already roasted. He never was quite sure what to do with the live ones, so they wandered around on his grass where he fed them whatever leftovers he had and otherwise left them to roost in the half-rotten shed at the back of the house. His life wasn't tidy, but it worked out most of the time.) But he couldn't be grateful to anything that brought young and promising men to him, broken and bloodied. Sure, he could fix anything (except the things he couldn't) and he had collected a fascinating set of tools that he only got to use on fools who'd gone and bloodied themselves. But if he had his druthers, he'd be delivering babies and putting cool cloths on the heads of the fevered, and he'd never, ever, see another open wound.

He made his way back to what most folks might call a sitting room. That's what it was supposed to be anyway, and people did sit in there. But given his profession, it was more of a waiting room, and that's what Bo Sheridan was doing in there right now. Waiting.

"How's he doing, Doc?" came the tense question. As if Ernst Ledbetter was the boy's brother or other close kin, instead of just another youngster tangled up in the feud.

"He's got himself a bed for the day," Cooter answered. Couldn't stand the anxious little look on Bo's face, so he added, "He'll be fine. We just got to let him rest." Eager nod at that; Bo sure was happy to hear it. "Bo, how long have you and Ledbetter been friends?"

A shrug for an answer. "A couple of weeks, I guess. He's—I met him at Miss Mabel's. He brought me into the Hickory gang."

"Bo." It was always tempting to call the boy 'Babe'—everyone always had, and in its own way, it fit. Especially right now, when he was sitting there in a hard-backed chair, trusting blue of his eyes shining through the hair that fell forward from his forehead. But the boy had implored them all to call him by an abbreviation of his given name, and Cooter figured_ someone_ ought to listen to him. "You had anything to eat today?"

"As long as Leadbelly was all right and didn't need me none, I was fixing to go see Mabel." And all the other ladies of the evening with their made-up names that were a pretty even match for what the boys called themselves. Diamond and Leadbelly. "I reckon she could—"

"Come on," Cooter interrupted before he could hear about whatever wonderfully nutritious breakfast that the madam could provide. Funny how the boy wanted to be Bo, but his survival in this town largely depended on everyone adoring him like the child he didn't any longer wish to be. "I ain't much of a cook," he admitted. "But Emma Tisdale done brought me some eggs in return for that cough elixir I gave her yesterday." Which had been just about as high proof as some of the moonshine that got brewed around these parts, but Miz Emma, she could be trusted to use it only for its intended purpose. The former schoolmarm, boarding house owner and sometime librarian followed every rule as if it were one of the Ten Commandments. "And some grits, if you got any idea how to make them."

He led Bo to the tiny kitchen on what he had come to think of as the house side of his office, though there were no distinct divisions and patients could be found just about anywhere on the premises. The boy instantly made himself right at home, fishing through Cooter's untidy cabinets for ingredients then mixing them together while waiting for the coals to heat in the stove. And it wasn't a surprise that he knew how to cook, really. Years of hiding in the orphanage kitchen with Miss Lavinia must've taught him something.

"You ever," he asked as he collected his books off the small table in the room, "think about your future, Bo?" Heavy manuals, thin pamphlets, most left open and upside down, with cracked spines. Some had been on the table long enough to collect dust and food stains. More books on other surfaces around the room, so he piled the ones he'd just moved into a corner of the floor. There were those that would say he ought to clean up this place, but those self-same people wouldn't think twice about consulting him with some exotic new symptoms that he'd have to read about on short notice to give them a diagnosis, and they never complained when he dug a book out of his untidy stacks and gave a name to what pained them. His system might not be perfect, but it had kept many an ailing person alive and well.

"Sure," the boy answered. "I reckon Leadbelly's going to be here all day, and you're going to want dinner later on, so I figure I'll stay here too, so's I can cook for you. I ain't sure what I'm going to do after it gets dark, but that's far enough away that I can worry about it later." And that, Doctor Davenport, constitutes my life's plans.

"You could stay here longer, if you wanted. Lord knows, I could use your help. Not just cooking, but with patients and such."

"You got Cletus for that," Bo reminded him. As if he needed reminding – he knew he had Cletus, could hear the clanging of chamber pots and bedpans getting tripped over in one of the infirmary rooms to prove it. Oh, that boy meant well enough, but he couldn't take two steps in a row without breaking something or other. "Besides, I got a gang that needs me. I'm the best horseman they've got. And anyway," the boy added as he poured the mixture he'd made into the now hot frying pan. Breakfast was just starting to smell really good. "I ain't too big a fan of blood."

Laughing wasn't the right thing to do, but it was better than crying. It was choosing to smile over things so far broken that he couldn't fix them. "That feud is a bloody thing," he pointed out.

"Only if you get too close to the guns, Cooter," Bo answered, winking like he'd just dispensed some pearl of wisdom. "Which I don't and I ain't gonna neither." Sounded like a great plan. Except for the part where there was no avoiding guns in this corner of the south. Ledbetter carried one, and just because he hadn't pointed it in Bo's direction yet didn't mean he never would. Loyalties could change in a heartbeat and bullets weren't anybody's friend. "Now," the youngster added. "Unless you want to eat right off the wood of that table, you'd best quit lecturing me and find some plates."

He saved lives, it was just what he did. Came naturally enough to him; he had an instinctive understanding of how most organs in the body worked. But the brain—especially the brain of a young boy like Bo Sheridan, well, he might never understand its inner workings. He knew stubbornness, though, and that whole thing about horses and water and how sometimes they'd rather just go thirsty then lower their heads long enough to drink.

He did as he was told, he set out plates that Bo heaped with food. And after that his mouth had better things to do than try to talk the boy out of feuding, full of eggs and grits as it was.


	6. Those Shoes

**6. Those Shoes**

The shoes, she had decided long ago, were the worst part of it. Seemed strange when it was the corset that hurt the most, that hindered her breathing and pressed hard into her unaccustomed skin, leaving bruises that lasted for days in its wake. The skirts and petticoats weren't any pleasure either, flowing under her feet and trying to trip her. She could at least be grateful that the bustle that had been mandatory when she was a younger girl had gone out of fashion and some girls were even wearing their skirts a little shorter these days. She couldn't, of course, give in the urge to raise her own hemline. The cutting edge of fashion was no place for an average girl like her to be.

Besides, she could handle the skirts. It was the shoes—tight, narrow, and utterly lacking in any sort of support—that made life as a woman unbearable.

She'd escaped it all once. Left every bit of it behind for one glorious, wonderful, terrifying and exciting year. She hadn't halfway known what she was doing, but she was determined, and she figured it out as she went. Decided that no matter what the outcome it was better than the alternative.

Then Luke had come along. Or, well, he'd always been there. She'd known about him since he was a little boy with an even littler brother, and she'd been brought down from the sprawling house on Lookout Ridge – where she had a second story view on the world below her, a wardrobe full of fashionable dresses and a doll with real hair – to see him. Maybe once a year her papa had hitched up the wagon and driven their little family of three down through Sitton's Gulch and across Daniel's Creek, past the stone outcroppings and along the narrow trails to the rickety farmhouse in the muddy fields below. She'd been younger in those days too, just a girl, but she was older than Luke. She was also supposed to be a little lady by then, but she'd always found ways to slip off for a little while to engage in rambunctious games with the younger boys, to milk the cow and pat the bristly hairs on the horse's nose. Luke had promised to show her how to ride, but her papa had started hollering right about then, calling her back to sit in the porch like a good girl. Didn't she know that her antics were upsetting her mother? Just look at that pale face and those fluttering eyelashes; the poor woman was about to swoon.

After awhile, Luke left her life for several years. Trips down to the lowlands stopped somewhere before her teens. Too rough down there, she got told. Too dirty and full of folks with shady morals. The relationship between her father and Luke's pa had always been tenuous as best; somewhere in the eighteen eighties it had crumbled to dust. Dust, like the fields in the lowlands, where she was no longer allowed to go and get dirty (with the boys). There was trouble brewing down there, and she didn't need to get in the middle of it, that was the way the story her father told her went.

And then, somewhere around the age of fifteen, a terrible truth had occurred to her – she was pretty. Very pretty, and not just in a my-papa-says-so sort of a way. More like the kind of way that made the older men in the congregation of the Rising Fawn Methodist Church cluck their tongues. "Growing up so fast," they'd lament on her behalf. "Not yet ripe for the plucking, but boy, she sure looks it."

It was, her mother informed her with her chin lifted in pride, an awful burden to bear. Being beautiful, well, it meant that other women would hate her and men would want her but be afraid to actually have her. Bitter experience, her mother pointed out, had taught her that the life of a beautiful woman was destined to be lonely.

The notion might actually have scared her, if she hadn't already been lonely her whole life. Most of it, anyway. She remembered those trips down to that old farmhouse in the valley, remembered that there were sounds of civilization to be heard down there. A train whistle, horses nickering, the voices of neighbors who could be visited by a short walk instead of a long wagon ride. There was the schoolhouse on Wildflower Hill, and beyond that there was the town within spitting distance. (Her mother would get the vapors all over again if she ever heard her say the words "spitting distance.")

She loved Luke. She figured she always had, even when he was nothing more than a half-wild farm boy, filthy up to his knees with that lopsided grin that invited her to eschew the expectations of her parents and follow him out on some distinctly unladylike adventure. Now that love had grown stronger, more fierce. Protective, almost. Luke had lost just about everything that had ever been important to him. Including, she sometimes felt, his sanity.

So she had brought him in from the cold misery of the streets, given him something of a purpose, and tried to soothe away some measure of his pain. It was (near as she could guess, having no siblings of her own) something an older sister would do to protect her younger brother. Even if she wasn't technically Luke's sister, she was just about the closest living relative she had left. She was his blood cousin.

Daisy. Most of her life she'd gone by that name and she had no quarrels with it. Duke, that was the other half, and she'd never had a problem with that part either. In fact, it was a source of pride—her papa had taught her that much. Even if the family from which he'd emerged had fractured sometime before her birth, brother butting up against brother (and a few other brothers besides) over prohibition and secession and statehood and war, that original pride had always stayed intact. A Duke was the best thing anyone could be, even if most of the Dukes had made dang-fool choices about their lives.

She'd loved her mother and papa as best she was able, even if they had expended too much time and effort in shielding her and her precious, beautiful femininity. She'd stayed up there on that ridge with them, lonely to her core, ignoring every whim to wander down to the city that her second story windows overlooked. A clearing amongst trees seen only on fogless days, winking at her from the distance, and its mysterious voice had always called her name. A place with people so close they just about rubbed shoulders just by going outside of their houses and if her parents scoffed at living in such a state, it sounded wonderful to her, magical. Her shoulders ached to rub up against another's. Almost, but not quite, any other's.

She would probably still be living up on that ridge now, leaving Luke to his own miseries while she herself stayed isolated from the men she now spent all her time in the company of every day, except there had emerged the need to be respectable. Or just to fit in with society, even if there wasn't a whole lot of society up on that hill. There'd been just enough, maybe, or it could have been something else, some sense of mortality on her parents' part, and what would their poor girl do if they died without marrying her off first?

She was, admittedly, older than most girls when they got betrothed. Old enough, in the end, to be formidable, sure of herself, mule-stubborn. When her papa came home looking like he'd committed murder or worse, and announced that it was a done deal, she'd been promised as a wife to Milo Beaudry, she'd laughed. Then, when she'd realized the words were serious, fought against them. Outright refused, folding her arms across her chest and uttering words no young woman was permitted to say to the people who had raised her. She'd stormed and sulked and closed herself off in her room, staying in there fuming and fussing. And waiting. Sometime after her parents had given up on talking sense to her, and gone off to sleep so they'd have a chance to start over with attempts at sense-talking in the morning, she'd slipped out of her room, gone down to the parlor and started digging through the sewing basket. By the time she emerged, the dull gray of dawn was trying to make its way through the windows and she was wearing her father's hastily tailored but still oversized garments. She'd tucked all the locks of long hair that she had cut off her head into the pockets of the trousers some loose intention to scatter them along the trail down into the valley, for birds to use for nesting. Her initial plan included leaving a note, but she got nervous about how long it would take to write and decided to head straight for the door instead.

"Little girl," her papa had called quietly from behind her, as the door to the house she'd grown up in creaked open, letting in the brisk morning air. She'd paused long enough on the threshold to try to explain about love and loneliness, how she'd rather be an old maid than married to Milo Beaudry. Her papa hadn't understood all of it, but he'd known what it was to be a Duke. To want something and to be willing to do whatever it took to get it, even if it meant pretending to be a boy, because girls weren't allowed to live alone in the city. Her papa had hugged her, offered his boots because she was still wearing girls' shoes, then hustled her on her way before her mother could rise and have the hysterics that they both knew were inevitable.

David was the first name she'd chosen for herself, picked it out as she walked the narrow path that ran down the ridge, watching the blades of grass melt their way out of the light frost that covered them. Sounded enough like her own name that she figured she'd remember to answer to it, and at least that decision about her new life was easy. The rest was daunting; by the time the trail leveled and widened out to become a road, she realized she had no idea how she would survive. Short hair and trousers made her look like a man, but she had no idea how to be one.

She had no skills, but she had plenty of talents. Charisma, it turned out, was one of them. Didn't matter whether she was Daisy or David, a smile was enough to open doors for her. Survival was another. Hungry, filthy and desperate, she'd worked her way into the more stately of the two gangs that feuded in the lowlands with a little deception and a little honesty: she presented herself as David Duke, a distant cousin of Coy and Vance Duke who had been early members of the gang. Her father had spoken of them as fools that he hardly even claimed any relation to, who had gotten themselves killed in the name of a feud that wasn't even really any of their concern. But she'd listened eagerly to those tales as a youngster, and now she figured that she'd rather be part of the same thing they had than to be trapped in a house on the hill with Milo Beaudry, so she'd ingratiated herself to the Porter gang. And once she was in, she discovered yet one more talent—perfect aim. Some men could charm snakes; she could charm bullets into hitting the tiniest and most distant of targets.

She'd been David Duke, low-ranking member of the Porter gang for just about a year, when Luke's family was killed. Rumor through the troops blamed it on the feud, but details never made it to her ears. Soon afterward, she found Luke prowling the streets, eyes dark with rage and fists clenched in barely contained violence. She'd risked her own tenuous lifestyle as a man to bring him into the gang; he, of course, instantly knew her. He'd confessed his need to avenge his family, and she'd promised to help on the condition that he didn't reveal her for who she was. Mostly, she'd figured, what he needed was family, and she was maybe the only one willing to claim him.

It hadn't taken long, once Luke joined the Porter gang, for him to gain rank. He had a knack for strategy, he gave all appearances of loyalty, and he was determined; of course, Cap Porter mistook him for being determined to win when all he wanted was to figure out who had killed his kin.

It was Luke that started to call her Yellow-eye, with a wink and a nudge. What was a daisy anyway, but a white flower with a sun-colored center? The name stuck, regardless of whether she liked it or not. It added to the sense of mystery about her—her eyes were blue, not yellow—and as Luke rose through the ranks, he pulled her up along with him as his side-kick and scout.

And only Luke could get her to put on a corset again, to pull on petticoats and a skirt, to wear those dreaded women's shoes. To trade in her prized identity as a man and reasonably respected member of a feuding gang for that of a dainty and vulnerable woman. To pretend that she wasn't half the things that she'd become.

As a woman, she could walk the streets without suspicion. She could go anywhere public, could stand right next to a pair of Hickory men as they bought bullets at the general store, could walk into the apothecary or the restaurant and chat with a fellow who fought on the other side of the feud because he'd never suspect that she was anything other than a sweet and clueless female. It made her the best scout in the south and anyone who might have wanted to ask questions about why Luke kept the skinny, quiet Yellow-eye at his side just bit their tongue when she came back from one of these scouting trips with the kind of information that stunned them all.

(At least, she thought, as she strode into the saloon with those too-tight shoes strapped across her ankles, she didn't have to tease her hair up into the loops and curls that women were wearing these days. A simple bonnet to hide her shorn locks and if it didn't make up for the way her feet hurt, it at least helped her to remember that she'd be back in boots again soon enough.)

It always raised a few eyebrows when she entered the saloon as a woman, but she took to the bar, close to Doc Appleby, and studied the place. Waited, as she always had, for one of the younger members of the Hickory gang to come along, then smiled and tipped her head to indicate interest. She made the young man come to her—today it was Dobro Doolin, the bragging fool that claimed lineage to the outlaw Bob Doolin who was currently terrorizing Kansas and Missouri—and then flirted information right out of him.

Luke (_Duke_, she had to remember to refer to him that way because everyone else did and his first name got deliberately lost in a world of guns and bullets and revenge) was the only one who could do this, could take the man she'd tried to become and turn him right back into a smiling, winking, carefully dressed and made up woman who could walk the streets of Trenton with impunity. Because he was under pressure, because he needed her, because he was more boy than man, caught up in the middle of a game whose rules he barely understood or cared about. It wasn't enough for Cap Porter, he'd confided in her, that the street battle of a week ago had reestablished town as neutral territory. Cap didn't want truce, he wanted victory. He wanted revenge, wanted dead men in exchange for embarrassment, he wanted someone to bleed because his pride had been wounded. And Luke had no taste for violence unless it was against the men who had killed his family, so he was at an impasse. Just a boy, in over his head.

The horses, that was the real insult, Luke figured. Hickory men riding Porter horses (and Luke wanted his own gelding back—Traveler had been with him since soon after he joined the gang and was rumored to have been sired by one of the horses on the since-burned Duke farm) was an embarrassing state of affairs, and if they could get those back, and perhaps take a few Hickory horses in the process, maybe Cap would let up on the need for bloodshed. Figuring out where the horses were kept was a job for Daisy, not Yellow-eye.

"Well, hello, cowboy," she whispered, all sing-song and sweet, when Dobro Doolin stepped up beside her at the bar. Inclined her head toward Doc Appleby so he'd buy them both a drink. As long as she drank one to each of his two, she'd have him talking in an hour, stumbling around drunkenly in two, and falling asleep on his own arms before the afternoon was done. By nightfall this little expedition would be done and she could slip out of the corset, the skirt and petticoats, and most importantly, she could get out of these horrid shoes.


	7. Take it to the Limit

_**Author's note: **Sorry, Dixie Davenport, Boss doesn't show up quite yet. But he's coming..._

* * *

><p><strong>7. Take it to the Limit<strong>

"You're a good boy." It took a lot of self-discipline not to laugh at that. When the closest thing the town had to a man of the cloth pronounced you good, it would be entirely wrong to laugh. But he wanted to, particularly when the deed leading to the praise consisted of him waddling down the road, arms loaded with women's clothing and even more garments draped over his shoulders. Collected at the church service and entrusted to Pastor Jesse, intended for those-less-fortunate.

"Don't you sass me, now," the pastor chastised, though the laugh never had made its way all the way out of him. Must've smirked or smiled, shaken his head and given away his feelings on this notion that he was anything like a good boy. "Everyone deserves kindness." The words came wheedling out of the elder's mouth, half defensively. "Them girls up there is in need. I know I ain't got to tell you that."

Pastor Jesse's hands were full, too. Odd how heavy and burdensome women's garments could be. Bo couldn't swear he'd ever thought about that before. Of course most of his imaginings had involved removing women's clothing from their bodies, not putting it on.

"They're good folks," Bo agreed. Still, he could just picture Leticia Tillingham's face gaping in horror if she ever saw the pink dress that she'd donated, as charity and to benefit those less fortunate, walking down the street on Chastity or Ruby or Lily's back. Not that high society women would be found strolling the streets on this same side of town where the prostitutes roamed.

"You're good folks too, Babe." _Bo_, he corrected. But inside his head where it was safe. The pastor was the fire and brimstone sort. Like Misses Montgomery at the orphanage had been, preaching about children who had to be taught lessons about what good behavior really was, spare the rod and spoil the child. Though her weapon of choice had been less rod than ruler. Hard knocks across knuckles and Bo figured the pastor for the same sort. Probably carried a whip inside his coat just for the purpose of reminding young men that they shouldn't answer back no matter what name he wanted to call them by. "You look after others."

"I figure I owe it to Miss Mabel," he explained.

"Mister Jesse, Mister Jesse!" came from behind them before the pastor could sermonize on the nature of repaying debts to whores. The old man turned, and Bo took advantage of the break in their stride to shuffle the contents of his arms—funny how it was just a bundle of cloth but was bone-breakingly heavy all the same.

"What now, Enos?" The words tried to sound patient, they really did. A pastor was meant to be kind and gentle and not to yell at the sexton whose only goal in life was to do good deeds on this earth. But even a saint would get frustrated by Enos Strate after a time. And Pastor Jesse wasn't a saint. Wasn't even really a pastor, but he was honest. Didn't hide or disguise his past or his shortcomings, and spent his Sunday mornings in the pulpit because he was currently the best man for the job. If a real pastor moved into town the church would be his for the taking, but no preacher in their right mind would come here. So Enos was in training to take over some day. He would probably have to leave town for some sort of schooling somewhere along the line, but he'd be back, and for now he was Jesse's near-constant companion.

"I brought you the breeches and suspenders." And Enos was the pastor's sometime tormentor, too. "All you got there is ladies' clothes. Ain't you gonna want the men's clothes too?"

"In the brothel?" Jesse bellowed back at him while Bo stifled a giggle and Enos flushed up a rosy pink. "If them boys that visit there come in without breeches, what makes you think they're going to leave with them?"

It had been, until now, a feat of strength and dexterity to carry this dense but slippery pile of clothing down Monroe Street, through the covered bridge over the trickle of Daniel's Creek, and up three blocks of Main Street to where the saloon housed the intended recipients of this fine bit of charity. Now, suddenly, it was a public spectacle featuring three red-faced men; Bo and Enos rosying up in embarrassment, and Pastor Jesse from a fine fit of temper.

"Uh, Enos," Bo whispered. Might as well have shouted for all that they had a sudden audience out here on streets that had been their normal Tuesday-morning empty. Men belonged at work and women did most of their shopping on Monday, so there was no reason at all that so many people should have the time to filter out of the butcher shop and the post office just to stare at a trio of men standing in the middle of the street, their arms laden with bright fabric and fine lace. "Maybe you should take those back," quietly, to the church. Where he would be safe behind the closed doors of the sanctuary to blush as hard as he wanted and squeak out all his nervous energy inside forgiving walls. "And then, after awhile, you could bring us the children's clothes." Because the second stop on this little expedition was to be the orphanage, where the whole town could agree, charity was needed. It would be for the best if this little band of observers could watch the pastor and his sexton do some unquestionably good deeds with the same fervor as they were watching Bo lug ladies' garments in the general direction of the brothel.

"Right, Babe," Enos squeaked out, his lips curving up into an eager-to-please smile. "I'll do that."

"That's a good boy," Pastor Jesse concurred, his tone all but patting his poor assistant on the head after that little bit of blustering he'd just done. Could be that Jesse and Enos were the two most mismatched men in the whole town, maybe the state. Enos had never even entertained a naughty thought in his life, while Jesse was, as Bo had heard more times than he could count, a stubborn old coot that had less sense than a chicken had thumbs. A mountain man, crafty as a fox, hiding his smarts behind that beard that made him look half-feral. A moonshiner, and the ladies in the orphanage, temperance movement members one and all, had been aghast at that.

It could have been senility, or it could have been sudden clarity of thought. No one knew and in truth no one cared to know because the church had gone without a local pastor for too long, and there weren't a lot of traveling pastors that wanted to visit Dade County to begin with, so whatever had brought the changes upon old Jesse went unscrutinized. The oldster had found himself called away from liquor and toward the church. Too bad it had happened after Miss Lavinia had passed on. She had, after all, high hopes for Jesse to come around from his wandering ways. Oh, she wouldn't have admitted it to a single soul, but Bo could hear the way her voice went wistful instead of scolding when she spoke of him.

Enos, meanwhile, was born all the saintly things that Jesse still hadn't quite gotten around to becoming. Pure and gentle, driven only by the urge to foist his goodness upon everyone he met. In a town wracked by feuding factions, Enos was sweet enough to rot a man's teeth right out of his head. And, fortunately, just about as forgiving as the day was long.

"Here," Jesse added, handing over some of the items in his grip. Appeared to be Francine Moffett's finery and look there, if the lady herself wasn't amongst the spectators that had gathered around them. Might just have been an urge for self-preservation that led the old man to the decision not to take those over to the brothel just now. "Take these back, too. And wait there. Me and Babe will come back for you there." So they could do their best to make an even bigger spectacle of themselves when taking clothing to needy children. Seemed perfectly wise to Bo.

Enos headed back to the relative safety of the church, leaving Bo and the pastor to smile and nod at the fine people of Trenton who had come to watch them trip up the street, the hems of ladies' dresses getting under their feet. Bo half wanted to run for it, and couldn't even say why.

"You're a good boy."

"You said that already," Bo pointed out, then regretted it. Sassing a pastor, officially ordained or not, was never wise. And it was even less wise when that pastor had a temper.

"I meant it both times," the old man next to him puffed out, his shorter, heavier legs pumping hard to keep up.

Bo sighed. "Give me those," he said, doing his best to hold out his arms for the few garments left in Jesse's hands. It wouldn't do anyone in town any good to let the old man give himself a heart attack.

Jesse piled the items carefully on top of what Bo was already carrying, tucking and patting until he was sure it would all make it safely down the next block to its destination. Smoothed the frock on top with his hand, then stopped, tilted his head to the side and smiled at him.

"It does a body good," the old-timer said, "to hear that he is growing up to be a fine man. I reckon I can't tell you that often enough."

"Pastor Jesse," he protested.

"Now boy, don't you go contradicting me." Rough old fingers reached out to grip his jaw, holding it firm so there was nowhere to look but into those hooded and fading blue eyes. "You're a good boy. You're also a fool. I ought to know. I been both those things myself for most of my life." Moments like this, it was easy to see how the man had turned to the pulpit. Full of fire and brimstone he was, chin up and chest puffed. "I know you went and joined up with that dadburned Hickory gang. You dang fool."

"You reckon it'd be better if I went with the Porters?"

"Don't you sass me, boy."

"Yes, sir." This was the part where he was supposed to look at his feet, but he couldn't see them for all the frilly dresses in between. His eyes cast downward anyway, even if there was nothing to see down there, even if he didn't want to. He wasn't ashamed of himself, not really. It wasn't like he'd had a lot of options for what to do with his life and at least if he was a member of the Hickory gang he knew how to spend most of his days, even if he didn't know why. And he had friends there, the kind he couldn't make hanging around the streets of Trenton, begging for work and looking for a safe nook in which to spend the night.

"But you're still a good boy," Jesse reminded him, fingers finally relinquishing their grip on his chin to come up and pat his cheek. "Lavinia always said so."

"You talked to her?" Shouldn't have been so surprising, maybe. "About me?" Except that he thought he'd known all the things that Miss Lavinia did with her day, and none of them seemed to include actually spending time with a half-crazed mountain man. "She said you was a moonshining fool."

That earned him a laugh. "And a stubborn old coot, I know. Boy," the old man said, "we all get on the wrong path from time to time. All you young'uns, whether you's with the Hickorys or the Porters, is just a bunch of lost sheep. But that's all right, because what would a shepherd like me do if'n there wasn't no lost sheep for me to tend to?" A pat on his shoulder then, and finally the pastor gestured for him to move forward, to resume their trek over to the saloon where Miss Mabel's girls awaited garments to replace the ones that had burned in the fire a couple of weeks back. Which was a very good thing, because one more minute of standing still and he couldn't have sworn that he would have made it all the way there without dropping his heavy load to the ground.


	8. One of These Nights

**8. One of These Nights**

There were times when he could look at the men strewn about this place, with their guns kept close but liquor kept closer, and he could see the children they'd been only yesterday. The children they still were. Close his eyes for just a second and he could see squeaky-voiced Emery Potter popping up from the edge of the porch at the blacksmith's shop, pointing his filthy finger at a skinny Dobro Doolin with a _bang-bang-you're-dead_. They might have been smaller back then, a bit more innocent, but these boys always knew about guns. Raised in a post-war, gray and gritty, broken little town in the lost corner of Georgia, and it would have been too much to ask that little boys played games that didn't involve aiming weapons at one another. Especially since the adults around them had been firing off bullets at each other their whole lives.

And now those same little boys were spattered here and there around the rough wood interior of the saloon, with their guns close, but their drinks closer. Seeking the sort of love that came at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and Rosco could relate to that. He had his own guns and his own drink and no one but him (and old "Doc" Appleby) knew that there was nothing stronger than water in his glass. On the rocks, because it looked more intoxicating that way, but it was no stronger than what ran in local streams (the pure ones, not the ones will stills built next to them) and under the bridge on Main Street. His mama and sisters had drilled into his head the evils of alcohol and the lesson, amongst so many others they'd tried to teach him, had stuck. Mostly. When the issue of making Dade a dry county had arisen at the general election two years back, he'd been one of the constituents who'd stuffed his ballot into the box marked _no_. He reckoned he didn't want to be tasked with enforcing an unenforceable law.

His water was pretty good company, the ice chips tinkling in the glass as he took to his own corner. Up at the bar near the door in case he was needed, but he didn't figure he would be. Most of the problems he got called upon to handle were right here in this same space with him – boys who would as soon put bullet holes in each other as breathe, but not here, not tonight. Hickory boys to the one side and Porters to the other and if they weren't comingling, they were sharing the same structure in half-drunken peace. Seemed like the Duke boy's little show from a week ago had worked, and town was neutral territory once again. Leaving fools free to get drunk, then wander upstairs and help themselves to one of the ladies of the evening. (And Rosco figured that he and his water would do best to stay right down here. Because his mama and sisters had told him about the evils of visiting with prostitutes, too.)

Thinking of Duke, there he was, fist full of cards and a smirk on his face. Eyes traveling from one of the boys at his table to another, assessing who was bluffing and who had a hand worth playing. Pointing his finger and laughing at something that Billy-boy Harper said, then unbuttoning his own sleeve and flipping it open to show he had no cards stashed up it. Gesturing for Billy-boy to do the same and shaking his head at the imprudence of a man who would try to cheat at cards when Luke Duke was in his midst. Cards falling out of Billy-boy's sleeve every which way, then all six boys at the table throwing down their hands and redistributing the pennies on the table so they could start the whole thing over. After, that was, Luke insisted that Billy-boy's shirt had to come off and stay that way for the duration of the game.

"Shame about that boy, ain't it?" was spoken across the bar at him, old Doc Appleby intruding on his thoughts and following his eye over to Duke's table. "That family used to make some of the best whiskey in these parts. Now they're all gone and he's too busy feuding to tend to a still." Well, that just was a shame. The boy had lost his whole family and the town mostly noticed the liquor that wasn't being brewed anymore. "Between him quitting the business and old Jesse turning preacher, there ain't a decent drop of whiskey to be found in these parts no more. All I can get is rotgut red eye. Not that it bothers you none," the bartender finished, pointing at Rosco's glass.

"Hush," he answered back. Not that he was exactly keeping secrets, but it probably wouldn't do for the townsfolk to know that their big, tough, sturdy marshal had never in his life tasted alcohol. "And get me another one." Which made old Doc groan, because fetching another drink for Rosco meant a trip down to the dank ice cellar to scrape whatever chips he could off the pitifully small block of ice that had survived this far into the summer. But it seemed perfectly reasonable that the saloon's owner and primary bartender ought to be grateful to have a marshal around to keep peace in his establishment, and that a paltry sliver of ice wasn't too high a price to pay to make sure the place stayed in one piece through the night. Of course, there wasn't the slightest sign of gratitude when the man stalked off to get what he was asked for, came back a few minutes later to wordlessly plop it down in front of Rosco, then proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the night.

Laughter and gibes from over at Duke's table, as drinks got lifted and play resumed. Rosco let his eyes drift around, resting here on Yellow-eye, taking tiny, almost dainty sips of whatever manner of firewater was in his glass, then there on Dobro Doolin telling tall tales to Pansy or Posy or Daffodil – one of the flower-named whores, while Hobie Harkins held up the walls with his drunken shoulder. The chairs and tables and glasses must've been spinning in loopy circles in Hobie's whiskey-logged brain; his eyes were just about rolled back in his head, and someone would be carrying his nonsense-talking self out of here before the night was over.

"Well, well, well, well, well and well," came from behind Rosco's left shoulder, followed by the creaking and slapping of the swinging doors to this place. The kind of sound that could give him a twitch of the eye, even if there was no way he should have heard it over the raucous noise of young people having fun. "Marshal Coltrane. How are you, this fine evening?"

This fine evening. Which had been a lot more fine before the intrusion of one rotund wad of arrogance had interrupted it.

"Well hello," he said, his voice dipping low and getting raspy, the way he heard other men speak after swallowing a mouthful of the rotgut that got served in this place. It always made them sound tough and worldly, just the slightest bit threatening and that was the impression Rosco wanted to give right now. "Justice Hogg. To what do I owe the pleasure?" And those words, he figured, tasted worse on his tongue than any whiskey ever could. Sure, he'd never sampled liquor, but he knew the flavor of civility in the face of utter revulsion, and it was more rancid than anything he'd ever dared put in his mouth.

"I'm just here to meet with some important people," the judge answered, his hand gesturing grandly, but then maybe that part wasn't his fault. With all that belly down below, perhaps his hands could only make the best of free space where they could find it, flailing broadly about the top half of his body. At least, Rosco thought to himself, the pipe that the man habitually smoked without thought to how many of the people trapped in his courtroom with him coughed at the smell, wasn't presently lit. "In the back. I trust," the judge added, one hand reaching up to adjust his hat. A fine piece of leather it was, too. Not like what most of the men in town wore, scraps from here or there, dusty, ill shaped, and some of them—like that white-blonde boy Babe Sheridan, presently letting out a whoop as he sat in the middle of a clump of other Hickorys—couldn't afford hats at all. "You can keep the peace out here while I do that."

Not that Justice Hogg noticed or cared about the poverty around him. As long as there was a fresh cooked side of beef on his table each night, he could ignore the fact that half the town had trouble feeding itself.

"The peace," he felt anger blaze up in him like fire burning from his guts, but the last thing he needed was to flush red in front of this man. The peace was keeping itself just fine without any help from either him or Hogg. And just look there, how the Duke boy's eyes came out of their drunken half-mast to watch that Babe Sheridan. To see whether boyish rambunctiousness would turn to genuine disruption or violence, to figure out whether weapons might be drawn and shots fired. Bright blue flash of awareness, but Babe settled down and Duke went back to handing out cards while coercing his cohorts to bet every penny they owned. Made Rosco wish, all over again, that he could have himself a posse full of boys like that Luke Duke. "The peace," he mumbled again, only half aware that he was repeating himself. Luke Duke was keeping the peace with just a glance. "You ain't got to worry about the peace," Rosco finally settled on.

"I don't?" Hogg answered back, low and conspiratorially. "Why don't I got to worry about the peace? Ain't you figure none of these boys is worth arresting?"

Worth arresting. "Not none of these boys," he answered back, hated that the words were the truth. Would have been happier using them as some sort of declaration about how he was not now, nor did he ever intend on, playing Hogg's game. Nothing got Jefferson Hogg (the man had started insisting on being called Jefferson Davis Hogg after the Confederate President, but anyone around here that was over the age of forty knew that _Davis_ was not his real middle name) hot under the collar like a youngster accused of a crime. So long, that was, as the youngster had rich parents that didn't want to see their child sentenced to any sort of time behind bars, and were willing to pay the judge to see the charges dropped. "Is worth nothing at all." Not a rich boy in the bunch. "And," he added, standing up off his stool. Which just about gave him a crick in the neck when he had to tip his head down to maintain eye contact with Justice Hogg. "Ain't none of them breaking the law, neither." Thought it sounded tough, strong, thought he delivered it with undeniable conviction.

But, "Not right now, maybe," Justice Hogg answered him with a tight and smug little smile. "But we'll see about tomorrow," seemed vaguely threatening as the man waved his fingers in the air and took his leave. Heading to the back room and his important meeting with nothing but disgusted looks for the riffraff around him, and Rosco had to fight down the urge to shudder.

"Ijit," he muttered to himself. Glanced around the room again, saw Luke Duke watching as the judge made his way through the door under the stairs. Then the Duke boy's eyes turned to meet his, a little squint of distaste there. Rosco just shrugged – _I don't like him either _– then went back to some very serious contemplation of the water in his glass, wishing it was strong enough to wash away the bitter flavor left in his mouth after talking to Justice Hogg.


	9. All Night Long

**_Author's note:_**_To those of y'all that had trouble accessing this chapter, I am sorry. The site has been alternately making it appear, then disappear. I'll try to be more careful about checking whether the site is malfunctioning before posting in the future. Thanks for going that extra mile just to read!_

_Just a reminder: __This story was also published on AO3 because it was originally written with lyric epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Ffdotnet doesn't want those lyrics there, and I can respect that. However, I felt that they were important to the way in which the story developed. Hence the cross-posting. There's a link on my profile to get you there._

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><p><strong>9. All Night Long<strong>

It wasn't that he didn't like the night, because he did. Liked the darkness that invited excitement, all senses on high alert. Felt the thrill through his body at what could happen and where the hidden dangers were, whether it was a night spent carousing in town or out here creeping through near-featureless fields where a raccoon might just as soon be a bear and the trees threw threatening shadows. Every sound had meaning, gave reason for hearts to beat faster and harder because darkness cloaked intention, hid motivation in its folds and it was impossible to tell whether bushes were rocks or trees were people. It was the darkest hours that made him feel alive, and not only that, made him feel like maybe there was a good reason to keep on breathing the air, walking the trails and plotting his little schemes. He liked nights.

But there were enough things he didn't like, plenty of reasons not to be happy about where he was and why. About how he'd been second-guessed and overruled and just about sent out here like a naughty boy who hadn't done all his chores. Darkness was an ally that he didn't need and furthermore didn't want on a mission of this nature. Which wasn't a mission at all, more like slaughter. Cows were trusting creatures, there was no need to sneak up on them. Any more than there was a need to sneak up on sleeping men.

"There," Yellow-eye was whispering at him and pointing them generally northward. No one knew the trails through these woods like their scout did. "About a mile, I think," was the estimated distance to the Hickory camp. Or some sort of camp and they had no way of knowing exactly what kind.

"Time to split up?" Harmon was asking him, but Luke put up a hand to hold him off on the notion.

He did like what the night did to his men. Made them alert, intensely aware of their surroundings, made them more protective of each other than they'd ever been in the light. No bickering or jockeying for position out here where the shadows swallowed up toothy predators and gun muzzles alike.

"Could be a still site," Luke warned. "Not yet." The dark separated the brave from the nervous, the foolhardy from the wise. All pretense stripped away by the howl of a coyote and the unexpected rustling of leaves.

Yellow-eye was a trusty scout. Every muscle tensed, ear cocked toward the slightest sound, sniffing the air like a doe caught between the smell of food and the scent of the hunter. Perfectly natural in these woods, but the scout had never brewed whiskey and couldn't discern the difference between a campfire and the sort that burned under a still. Not at this distance, anyway.

Hand signal and Luke moved his gang forward. Resisted the temptation to think of them as troops, of this as a battleground. War had torn across this land, and there were enough men still alive to tell the tales of it. How it was relentless and seemed endless, there was no break from it to go out for just one night and relax, how soldiers went hungry as often as not. That there were long days of marching directly into enemy territory, how combatants looked each other right in the eye before the shooting started – no, this wasn't war. It was two town elders fighting for dominance of the region, using sneaky tactics and other people's sons to do their battling for them.

(_"Duke," Cap Porter had said to him with a shake of the head. "I'm disappointed in you." Tried to sound fatherly, and if it worked, it wasn't in the way the man in front of him intended it to. The echo of the words in Luke's head came out sounding too much like his real father, the man who didn't want him in the feud to begin with. _

_Made him remember all those times he'd stood in the face of scolding and made excuses. About the cow being too fussy to be milked or the ground being too dry and hard to plough, about Jud getting in the way of his chores. About anything at all to try to distract his father away from mistakes Luke just needed to own up to, and he'd give anything now to face his pa's whip instead of this man's pathetic attempts at motivating him. Hard to imagine missing anyone as much as he missed his family. _

"_Them Hickorys ain't strutting around town like they own it no more," wasn't an excuse or a defense, it was Luke stating a simple fact. He'd led his men right onto Main Street, walked up to Thackeray and demanded respect and an apology. Hadn't gotten either just for the asking, there'd been shots fired and bloodshed, but in the end, he'd won back the ground they'd lost the night the brothel burned. _

"_Maybe not. But the fact that they're still strutting around town at all is—galling, is what it is."_

_No, it wasn't. It was normal. It was reasonable. Neither Ol' Nut Hickory or Cap Porter had any claim on the streets in the heart of Trenton. And the folk that lived and worked there had a right to get from one place to another without worrying about being run through by a stray bullet. Town was neutral territory and Luke didn't figure on taking control of it through some sort of siege._

_But that, it turned out, wasn't what Cap wanted anyway._

"_You got to hit them on their home territory," Cap had insisted. "At night. Like they done to you. Why, you was just resting up for the night when they tried to burn you alive, wasn't you boy?"_

Which time?_ he'd wanted to ask. Two weeks ago in Ruby's bed or more than two years ago in his own? But he hadn't, because the memories seared into his mind, the sound of flames consuming everything around them, the smell of wood and fabric burning, the feel of heat singing the hair on his arms – none of it was this man's business. _

"_The way I see it," Luke had answered back, no fear of being chastised for sassing his elders, because this man wasn't now and never had been his father. "The only beef we got left is the horses. We get them back, and we'll be square with them Hickorys." For now, until the next battle broke out._

"_Then get them back," Cap had responded with a smile that mistook Luke's intentions for being the same as his. "In a night raid on their camp." That part was an order, foolish as it was. The horses wouldn't be kept where the men slept, too risky. But Cap wouldn't think about that, he wasn't a strategist or even a fighter. He was just the man in charge. "And if you kill a few of them Hickory boys in the process," _I'll let you be for a while_, was what Cap didn't say, but he didn't have to. They both knew it was the truth. "That would be fine, too."_)

"Whoa," Homer muttered, here, now, tonight in the woods, miles away from where Cap Porter slept and had no worries about filthy, high-strung and tired boys creeping up to his house with guns at the ready to shoot him.

"Easy," Luke answered back, but his men huddled closer together anyway. When the train whistle sang out a second time, high and haunting, Luke could understand how it got inside them, under their skin and prickling up. Sounded like a woman shrieking and if he hadn't grown up his whole life with it (that gray voice, screaming out of the fog and darkness, giving name to everything that had ever mattered to him), it would spook him, too. So he let them gather, let them forget their current mission, gave them a chance to be frightened boys taking comfort in one another. Then he moved them forward again.

"Look," Yellow-eye whispered when what had just been a smell until now became a vision. Burning low, hardly more than the glow of embers, and it was a campfire. With a boy next to it, learning back against a bedroll. "Shh," the scout admonished until they all stilled and cocked their ears toward the camp. A snore. Seemed like the Hickory lookout had fallen asleep. Meanwhile, beyond the fire's circle were the lumps of boys sprawled out on the ground with the full confidence that they were protected.

"Well, now," came the happy little announcement from Luke's elbow. "Snake" Harmon (who was really Stephen, and Luke had known him well enough in their previous life as schoolboys—came to school in clean knickers and smooth white shirts because he was a town boy who didn't have to sow or harvest, and he was good at math but couldn't run or jump because he didn't have an athletic bone in his body), crowing over sure victory. "This ought to be fun." And for all that Luke wanted to point out that "Snake" couldn't aim his revolver well enough to hit the side of a barn under regular circumstances, he had to admit to himself that in this situation, even the Harmon boy had the advantage.

And that was his problem with this whole thing. It was sneaky and cowardly and most of all, it was pointless.

"All right," Luke sighed. "Y'all spread out around the perimeter. Take your positions, but don't," he paused there, made sure that he had the full attention of every last one of them, "fire even one bullet or make a single sound until I give you the signal, you hear me?"

They all mumbled that they did and started to make their way to strategic positions around the clearing.

"Luke," Yellow-eye complained to him, but this wasn't the time or place for that.

"Go on," he snapped. Insubordination couldn't be tolerated, even from the most loyal member of his team. "Do what I said."

Which made the scout huff a heavy breath and move out. Slowly, they were all moving like molasses on a winter morning. So confident and sure of themselves, such an easy task and maybe one or two of them were dreading it in their own way. It was all well and good as a game of strategy, but which of them would blanch at the sight of blood? Who would be sickened by what they were about to do?

Then again, which of the Hickorys would have any sort of second thoughts if the roles were reversed? Had the cowards who had killed Luke's own flesh and blood ever regretted what they'd done? No, they hadn't, because between staying alive and plotting strategy, feuders didn't have any time for doubts.

Which was why Luke didn't have any remorse about his next decision. He figured there were good people who made mistakes and then there were fools that were too dumb to be worth saving, and now it was up to this band of Hickorys to prove which they were. So while the rest of his men moved languidly through the night, Luke slipped quickly back the way they'd come. Not far, just enough to spot what he'd chosen to leave be on their way out here. A doe, huddled low under a tree, and he spooked her. Got her up onto her hooves and scared her off toward the Hickory encampment. It wasn't much, just the wildlife acting unusual, and most men would sleep right through it. But if there was even one man in the Hickory encampment with solid enough woodsman's skills to pick up the sound of hoofbeats that didn't belong where they were, well, Luke was willing to let them sound the alarm to the rest of them.

"Leadbelly!" came hollering out of nowhere. Loud, scared, cracking like a voice too young to have finished changing yet. Wasn't any of Luke's men, and he grinned at it. This might, after all, turn into a fair fight. He counted to five while the camp in front of him stirred to some semblance of alertness. The he cupped his hands together and brought them to his lips to emit a coo that could be mistaken for a mourning dove. After that, everything got loud as the world around him erupted into gunshots and screaming voices.


	10. Twenty-One

**10. Twenty-One**

"Lukas," he said. Or growled, maybe it came closest to a bark. And maybe it wasn't fair to go trading on his knowledge like that, to pull out a name the youngster hadn't heard spoken aloud in years. Not, at least, since he'd lost his father and probably before that. There hadn't been enough fire in Matthew Duke's soul to make him discipline his boys, not since Lureen had died back in eighty-nine. Poor young'un probably hadn't been held accountable for much of anything since he was no more than a schoolboy.

Wasn't fair to trade on that little nugget of familiarity that he had, to remind the boy of days gone by when they could sit together in front of the hearth of a home that didn't exist anymore. To make his spine stiffen for all of a breath, to make him turn and try to unleash a deadly glare, to force the boy to realize that looking mean didn't make everyone shrink away from him. To match him, blue eye for blue eye until the youngster backed down. Shoulders slumped and he turned away again.

"It ain't doing no one no good for you to be paining like this." A shrug for an answer. The thought was too big, maybe, encompassed too many things all at once for Luke to break it down and accept it as simple fact.

The rush was over. Those that were going to live were made as comfortable as possible on the wooden floor or the cushioned pews, bandaged and medicated as much as possible when all those tending to them had about half the tools and skills amongst them to administer proper treatment. Whiskey was probably the best medicine they had; sterilized wounds and, when taken internally, gave them half a chance of sleeping.

Down here at the back end of the sanctuary, near the door for easy transport when the time came, was the one who wasn't going to make it. Had already not made it and all was peaceful now that he was gone.

"Ain't none of this your fault," he pointed out. Another shrug from the boy who stood in the middle of the cavernous sanctuary, somewhere between the living and the dead and committing to neither. "Luke," he insisted, leaving behind the body of the man he'd administered last rites to not five minutes earlier. He'd make arrangements soon enough, since there was no next of kin to contact. "Ace there was a full adult." Unlike the boy in front of him. "He made up his own mind what he wanted to do." Another shrug and if he thought it would work, Jesse would grab the boy and shake him. Or just hold onto him until he stopped fighting, but it would take a younger, stronger man to manage that. It would take the boy's father.

"He did what I told him," Luke answered back, finally.

"Because he wanted to," Jesse countered. Or because his brains worked about as well as a derailed train. Ace Parker never had been his mama's smartest child, even if he was her only child. It was amazing he'd survived to adulthood, really. Always looking for trouble with no ability whatsoever to handle what he found. "But," he offered, because given the opportunity, the Duke boy would stand there and mentally berate himself all day, hands curled into fists and shoulder muscles so taut it would seem they ought to rip the seams of his shirt. "If'n it's going to make you this miserable, you could always walk away."

"Walk away," Luke mumbled under his breath, shaking his head at fools who thought they were anywhere near ready to counsel the young. And Jesse had to admit, the boy had something of a point. He'd already walked away from so many things (by choice or by circumstance): his family, his home, his heritage, his sanity and peace of mind. Walking away from the feud would be giving up the only thing he thought he had left.

"You could always come here and stay with me." Away, always away, and Jesse needed to give him something to come toward. Some days he figured that he was the closest thing the boy had to family (and other days his faith on that notion wavered) and that it was up to him to bring Luke back from the wilderness in which he'd lost himself.

Again, Luke turned his head just enough to let those bright blue eyes bore into him over that too tight shoulder. "You ain't got no use for me," he accused. "You got Enos."

Yes, he did, and Enos was everything a sexton ought to be. Over there squatting low and tending to the ailing (or the bullet hole-ridden, as the case happened to be) under the watchful eye of Cletus Hogg. Between good intentions and enthusiasm, the two of them might just bumble their way into making sure that Junior Harper and Black-Jack Jackson came out of this mess, this aftermath of night of fighting, with nothing more than limps and scars. In the farthest corner, Luke's right-hand-man, Yellow-eye, was speaking quietly to Emery Potter, who had what amounted to a few scratches from where he fell into the brambles when the gunshots got too close to him.

"It ain't about what I got, Luke," he reminded the boy. "It's about what you could have. Your pa wouldn't have wanted you to live like this."

"My pa—" _ain't here to stop me_, the boy might have said, but he didn't get the chance. A clink and a clatter, a splash and some nonsense sounds stopped him from getting any more words out.

"Oh, Enos, I'm sorry," Yellow-eye stammered in a voice so high it sounded like child's. "I didn't mean to."

"That's all right, Yellow-eye," the sexton answered back, taking a step back from where Luke's scout was trying to use a corner of his coat to wipe at a disaster that was well beyond being patted away.

"Now that's a fine mess," Jesse commented as he and Luke watched water drip out of Enos' hair, his eyebrows, the hem of his coat and the seat of his pants. Old Yellow-eye must've stumbled while carrying the pan of water he'd been using to cleanse Emery's minor wounds and dumped it right over the poor sexton's head.

"It ain't no big problem," Enos was insisting.

"Just hold still," Yellow-eye commanded, "so I can clean you up." It was like using a pebble to stem the incoming tide; there was no hope for success.

Luke's head dropped, and then a near miraculous thing happened – the boy laughed. Just a few snorts at first, then a kind of choking sound before he tipped his head back and let loose.

"Very funny, Luke," Yellow-eye snapped as he kept trying to tend to a somewhat reluctant Enos, while Cletus joined in the fray with bandages to try to sop the water away.

The Duke boy, well, Jesse had watched him grow from a little tyke to a strapping young man over the course of about fifteen years, and then he'd seen how the boy grew hard and bitter over the last four. But somewhere deep inside, the elder figured, there was still that gentle heart that had beat inside Luke when he was nothing more than a farmer's son. The pastor stepped up beside the youngster and dropped an arm across his shoulders.

"Your assistant is about as coordinated as my assistant, I'm afraid," he announced, before Luke could decide to glower at him for standing too close.

"Don't rightly know what got into Yellow-eye," the boy chuckled back as they watched Enos give in and let himself be tended to. "It ain't like him to make a mess like that."

"You and him is just alike, Luke." That got those eyes to study him. Suspicious or skeptical or just plain confused. "You're young. You're a little bit foolish, and you make mistakes. Big ones, small ones, don't hardly matter because they're mistakes. Don't neither of you mean no real harm and it ain't nothing you can't make amends for."

The boy stepped out from under his protective arm then, shot him a hateful glance, followed by a long look at where Ace Parker was laying far too still.

"Luke," he tried, but the boy wasn't about to listen to another word from a foolish old man like him.

"Yellow-eye, leave him be," the youngster commanded, straightening his spine and lifting his chin with the sort of arrogance that marked him as a high-ranking member of the Porter gang, a man used to giving orders and getting them followed. "We got to move on anyways."

Of course they did. This here was the intermission, the break between bloody battles. Some kind of unspoken truce that cropped up every time things got really ugly, and one feuding faction would take over the Doctor's office where Cooter would tend to their wounded, and the other would bring their injured here for Cletus to look after. But soon enough all the tending that could be done would be, and the Hickorys would avenge the revenge that the Porters had already gotten in retaliation for the revenge sought before that.

"You probably got a little time, if'n you wanted to stay a spell," Jesse offered. "Cletus over there tells me that Thackeray didn't make it."

And for all that it would make sense for Luke to be happy at the news that one of the higher-ranking members of the Hickory gang had been killed in last night's skirmish, the boy just frowned all the harder.

"Nonetheless, I reckon me and Yellow-eye got to go now," Luke answered, grabbing onto the sleeve of his somewhat reluctant scout. Who finally relented in his attempts to take care of Enos, and left the task to Cletus.

"All right, Luke," Jesse agreed. "You just remember, if ever you want it, you got sanctuary in this here building. With me."

Nothing more than a grunt of response came from the boy, but Yellow-eye thanked him sincerely for his concern before being all but dragged out of the church by the hand.

Which left old Jesse to send Enos off to the rectory to find himself something dry to wear while the pastor figured out what arrangements to make for the dead man.


	11. Desperado

**11. Desperado**

They were the restless sort – moving, always moving. Here to there and never getting attached to any one place, because they couldn't come back here tomorrow. Maybe next week or the one after they'd come around again, but the stay would be every bit as short then as it was today. It was hard, Luke would justify, to hit a moving target.

They were even more nomadic now that they'd gone against Luke's principles and attacked the Hickory boys at night while they slept in their own home territory. It seemed pointless, when she had that same Duke honor in her that had hated everything about that raid, to try to explain to Luke that principles didn't belong here. Not in this feud, maybe not in any. Feuds, after all, were just small wars with the same sort of gruesome goals attached. Wear down the opposition until they stopped fighting – but that was too simple. The men who had started this ongoing skirmish, who stoked it and kept it aflame, mostly fought by proxy. Winning, then, meant killing or maiming the boys that did the fighting in their name.

There were things that Daisy would never do, but Yellow-eye had. Seemed crazy, since they shared one body and one brain, but it was true. Daisy would never fire a gun, but if she did, she'd never point it anywhere near another person, whereas Yellow-eye was reckless and took pride in his perfect aim. He could make a bullet miss a man by no more than a breath of air, a bloodless shot that left only kicked-up clods of dirt in its wake.

But they hadn't, either of them, killed a man. (Daisy figured that was good, because if Yellow-eye ever did kill someone, she was pretty sure she'd have to banish him from her life and there was no telling what kind of damage to her sanity that sort of separation could cause.) Luke hadn't killed anyone either, she didn't think, at least not directly. Not by a bullet out of his own gun, but he acted like he had anyway. Felt each death as if it was weighing on his own soul, and maybe they all were. But he didn't stop, didn't even take the time for an extra breath, he just kept on leading anyone who would follow him into fight after fight. And in between the whole bunch of them kept on shuffling and moving, always moving.

Paradoxically, Daisy loved the constant shifts and changes – it spoke to her adventurous streak, the thing deep in her heart that made her want this life in the first place – but Yellow-eye hated the endless movement because he had to scout out each new location. Time spent wandering the narrowest of trails, half of them buried under the detritus of last year's fallen foliage, looking for a nook or cove with enough of a clearing to sleep more than a dozen, but well protected from attack of any kind. And once he'd found a spot (because when Daisy was Yellow-eye, she was a he, no matter how crazy the notion might seem to anyone outside of her head) Luke still had to inspect and approve it. A process that, about a quarter of the time, led to more searching and seeking until Luke was finally satisfied. The good nights were the ones when they went back to stay at an old campsite.

And the very best days were the ones in Hidden Hollow, where she and Luke (because she was always Daisy in Hidden Hollow) would retreat, just the two of them. The excuse they gave each other was grooming, the ongoing effort to maintain her identity as a man. Which was tied to Luke, or they both tacitly agreed to pretend it was. She had, after all, managed the task for a year before he came along to help her. Funny how easy it was to forget that.

This was a treasured moment, separate from all the other moments they lived, when she could feel the gentleness of her cousin's hands and they ran through her hair, lifting it away from her head to trim off the ends with the small knife that he kept in a pouch on his belt. Not a weapon, but a tool wielded with inordinate kindness.

Funny how soft and easy his fingers could be when every other muscle in his body was tensed. Ready for a fight, any time and for any reason, waiting for things to hit or strike out against to release everything that was pent up inside him.

But the only thing that let go was his tongue. Sucking against the back of his teeth. Hands working through her hair again, as he measured lengths and silently berated himself for an uneven cut.

"Gonna have to take a little more off now," he mumbled, but it was to himself, not to her. Because he was the only one that was upset about his mistake. She knew beauty, had been beautiful once and it had been a losing proposition. There were no mirrors in her life now, and even if there had been, her appearance wouldn't matter to her. It was important to Luke, because he wanted things for her. Had designs on seeing that she was happy, and when it came right down to it, he was nothing but a man. Men were easily confused (unless they were women pretending to be men, in which case they were uniquely knowledgeable) and equated beauty with pleasure. Which Luke wanted her to feel, because he could see a future for her. But he couldn't see one for himself. Couldn't see anything around the ball of hatred and fury inside of him, the need for revenge over what had been taken from him.

"Thank you, sugar," Daisy said, turning around to kiss his cheek when he pronounced her haircut done. In their earliest days of doing this, she used to hug him. Up on her toes with her arms around those tight shoulders, and the tension wouldn't ever leave his body, but he'd put one arm around her waist, and give her a token pat before stepping back. Half of his first year in the gang, maybe, it happened that way until one time when she put her arms around him and his wide hand gripped her by the ribcage and he pushed her back. Not rough, just firm, no-nonsense. Then he'd told her that she needed to find herself a good man and settle down.

_Your virtue is safe from me,_ she'd answered back, her light laugh masking the hurt. He'd matched her with a snort over things long gone, things he'd had once and lost, things he could never get back. He'd accepted a kiss on his cheek then, because they had secrets between them, but romantic interest in each other was not one of them. She could still see the little boy he'd once been, muddy up to his knees, scabs on his knuckles and a lopsided grin that the devil himself would have admired. Her affection for him now was the same as it had ever been and somewhere under all those layers of anger and pain he knew what she knew—that she touched him with kindness because he needed it and deserved it, even if he couldn't remember how to properly accept it anymore. Sometimes it made her wish that she still lived the life of a girl at the top of Lookout Ridge, so she could make him a pie. He couldn't hug, but he could still eat.

She had, perhaps three times since Luke had re-entered her life, gone back up that hill, dressed in the clothing that she and Luke kept hidden under the porch of the schoolhouse he'd once gone to. Dress, corset, petticoats and those abhorrent shoes, all wrapped in layers of burlap and shoved through a hole in the latticework, just sitting there waiting for her to reclaim her femininity for a few hours here or there. Not Yellow-eye's clothes, but they weren't Daisy's either. Garb that Luke had gotten the prostitute Ruby to lend him on some pretense or other. Probably hadn't taken much; he'd probably just told the girl not to ask questions and she'd simply acquiesced.

Ruby thought she loved Luke, that much was obvious to anyone (or any woman, and maybe it wasn't fair for her to carry Daisy's brain in Yellow-eye's disguise, to watch things through feminine eyes framed by a masculine haircut) who looked. The poor girl was somehow waiting to be rescued. To be saved by a man who didn't even know how to save himself, and she was a fool, Daisy could admit that. But Luke ought to be a better man than to trade on that foolishness. He was raised to be that better man.

Daisy didn't pretend to know what the purity of true love was, but she did know it wasn't something to be mocked. Nothing to pretend at or mislead someone about. She reckoned she had the high moral ground on this subject; she'd left home over the attempt to marry her off to someone she couldn't feel love for.

(But what did love feel like? Was it that dull ache in the pit of her stomach when she got to dwelling on the people who had raised her, who were still alive up there on the hill while Luke's kin were buried in the unforgiving ground? Or was it that other thing, the flutter in her chest, the way her breath got shallow and her limbs got loose and untrustworthy when she was in the same space with the boy that helped Pastor Jesse? Enos, he'd said his name was, but she'd barely heard it over the blood rushing in her ears.)

She'd don the ill-gotten clothes, and she'd slide through town undetected. She'd learn what she could, she'd report back to Luke, and then, every once in a great, long while, she'd take her leave and strike up over stony paths, aching in those shoes that her feet no longer knew how to inhabit. She'd knock on the door to the house where she'd grown up, and she'd be welcomed with quiet hugs and sad eyes that knew she wasn't going to stay. She'd make sure her parents were still healthy and ask if they wanted her to bring them something from town next time, and her mother would tsk over beauty wasted and tell her no. It wasn't much, but it was enough. A few hours here or there to know precisely who she was, to not mentally trip over the he and the she of the situation. To just be a Duke.

And though almost no one called him anything but Duke, Luke had forgotten that. What it meant to be a Duke, to have the guiding star of integrity in his soul, to do more than survive—to live.

Maybe, she thought as they switched places and she began to stroke her fingers through his hair, choosing where to cut first, today would be the day he'd let her remind him. Maybe he'd tolerate her efforts to show him affection. Maybe, if she asked him the right way, he'd shave off that month's growth of beard and reveal the face underneath. The one of a young boy, still three months shy of twenty. Maybe, for a minute, he'd shed that haggard look of a man in search of revenge. Maybe he'd catch sight of his reflection in the water of a stream and see something there that was worth saving, worth giving up his demons for. Maybe he'd remember that he was a Duke.

"Come on," he groused, when she took too long to measure out what she'd already cut against the longer hair that she hadn't gotten to yet. "We ain't got all day for this."

Ah, well. A girl could hope. And be patient, because they'd be out here again next month, doing this same thing. Maybe she'd find a way to talk sense into him by then.


	12. Bitter Creek

**12. Bitter Creek**

"Yeeee-haw!" The call made, in its own warped and ridiculous way, perfect sense. Or maybe _sooo-eee_ would have been better. His job, after all, pretty much boiled down to wrangling unruly livestock. Dumb, stubborn livestock, slick with rain or mud, so they'd slip off his rope half the time. (Wait, did people lasso pigs? Or was that cows?)

And in the corner sat the most stubborn of those cows he was meant to herd. Or bulls? More of a bull, maybe, but he didn't know whether bulls got herded. He figured it was for the best that he never found out, really.

Sometimes he was a little bit ashamed that his knowledge of farming was utterly pitiful when it was both lifestyle and living for so many folks in these parts. They put food on his table, but he was a mite too busy trying to keep them from killing each other to learn much about their ways. So sows or bulls, lassos or hog calls, he didn't know anything about any of it, but he knew the stubbornness of that Duke boy.

There he was, in his corner. Pouring rotgut into his belly like filling a pit, but liquid was a funny thing. It had a way of seeping into crevices and cracks, soaking down deep and even after twice as much had been consumed as it ought to take to fill that hole inside, a man still felt empty. Drinking in the way that had made many a man sick and killed a few others. Most times it just made them stupid, though, made them easy targets for a marshal to nab and stick behind bars until the stupid wore off and they were safe to turn loose into society again.

"Yeeee-haw!" That wasn't Luke, but it was loud enough to make the boy pick up his head to take a look, to let the intensity of his glare settle on the offender for a moment. A little squint there against the gaslights, as if he were already hung over, but he took another drink to quell that and went right back to staring at the table in front of him. Rosco half expected it to start smoldering from the burning look it was enduring.

"Howdy, Marshal," the Duke boy greeted though he certainly hadn't looked up to see Rosco approaching him. "What can I do for you?"

Someone, somewhere had taught this boy his manners. (And Rosco knew precisely who, could remember the firm grip when Matthew Duke had shaken his hand, could see the mist settling in the late morning on that old farm out on Gray Voice Lane as the two of them discussed who might have filled his young son Jud's backside with buckshot.) Painfully polite, somehow dismissive even if his words pretended at inviting, and this boy could make a serpent look friendly.

Rosco slid onto the bench across from him anyway, even if every line that he could ever read between told him that he was not at all welcome there.

"Duke," he started and wished he had himself a drink. His usual water would do fine, what he really needed was the glass. Something to stare into, to spin on the table, to fiddle with because that was what men did in this place. They used their drinks to distract themselves until the alcohol content hit them and then their brains did all the distracting for them. "Ain't you ever get tired of this thing? It ain't your fight."

Rosco wasn't a farmer and he wasn't a fighter. He wasn't lucky with ladies and he'd probably never marry or have children of his own. He didn't know the first thing about child-rearing, but he did know how to speak plainly. Or how to try, anyway. Sometimes his tongue got tangled along the way.

"It's mine as much as it's anybody's," the boy mumbled back. And maybe it was true. Could be that the feud belonged to all of them equally by now. Porter and Hickory had all but retired from it, leaving it to the next generation to fight it out for them. And these boys, fools that they were, had taken ownership of resentments that didn't rightfully belong to them.

"Don't you want it to be over?"

The Duke boy shrugged at that. So detached. So hopeless, maybe. So close to drunk that Rosco could just about feel it himself, the warmth of liquor flowing through him, quelling his thoughts, taking away the edge. Almost there, but this boy wouldn't ever let it get the better of him, wouldn't get loud and stupid or pull a weapon, wouldn't get so far along that he couldn't walk himself to wherever home might be on any given night. Wouldn't make himself a guest in the iron-bar hotel that Rosco ran, and it was a shame. A few days with this youngster, and maybe the marshal would stand a chance of breaking him.

"I don't reckon it ever will be," Luke finally answered. Maybe it wouldn't, not for this boy. Not as long as his family was still dead and the home he'd grown up in was still ashes long-since scattered by the winds. "Why wish for something you can't have?" might just have been the most heartbreaking words ever spoken. And got punctuated by another yee-haw from across the room.

"Ijit," Rosco echoed back at the sound that had startled him with its volume. He and Duke both looked over there this time, quietly spending a few seconds watching a table filled with Hickory boys playing cards, that silly-happy grin spread across Babe Sheridan's face as he pulled the pool of coins from the middle of the table and piled them in front of himself. The other three fellows at the table didn't look too happy about it, and Rosco figured he might wind up having to deal with problems from that quarter later. But for now, Babe took to shuffling the cards again, preparing to deal the next hand.

"Look," Rosco began to bargain. "I know you got that Yellow-eye, and I know he's worth his weight," which wasn't much; he was an awfully skinny guy, "in information. He's a better scout than anyone in this whole county." Luke's eyebrow went up, a small acknowledgement that he was listening. It was more than he'd ever gotten from the boy before. "If'n you was to share some of that information with me, maybe tell me something about Grady Byrd," the hapless sap that was leading most of the Hickory boys these days, "that would give me liberty to arrest him and see to it that he got put on trial…"

"I ain't got nothing for you," came hissing out from between the boy's teeth. Closing the topic with just those words, and the ones he didn't say. _Don't ever ask me that again._ "You want to know something, you just go ask Byrd himself. Or better yet, why don't you go interrogate Thackeray? I'm sure he'd be perfectly willing to tell you everything." Except, of course, that he was dead, and they both knew it. Duke knew it better than anyone did; rumor had it that it was a bullet from the boy's gun that had penetrated the man's chest. Rosco didn't figure that was quite true. When Doc Davenport had pulled the slug out from between that meticulously clothed set of ribs, he'd said the twisted metal looked like it had come from a rifle, not a revolver like the Duke boy was known to carry. But there was no telling for sure.

"Duke," he said in a conspiratorial whisper. "You could be out of this thing all together. I need good men." And Luke Duke was one of the best. He was fearless, could plot strategy in rings around just about anyone in this area, and he was a pretty fine shot, too. "If you was to become part of my posse…"

"What?" Luke answered back, not loud but not precisely in a hushed tone, either. Deliberate, cold. Beyond caring who overheard them, maybe. "You'll protect me? You'll make sure that I don't get killed?" An exasperated gesture followed, a meaty hand slicing through the air, cutting away all pretenses. "I ain't afraid to die, Rosco." And that, right there, was the boy's biggest flaw. A little consideration of consequences could do a man good. "I ain't got nothing worth living for." Oh, but he did, or he would be gone already. No one survived as many close calls as Duke had without some will to persevere. "You want to save someone," Duke finished up, using one thick pinky finger to point across the room, "maybe you ought to go recruiting that Babe Sheridan."

Who was still over there smiling over yet another hand of cards, and maybe the fool knew a few tricks about stacking the deck. Maybe not, maybe he was just lucky. Seemed like he'd had enough bad luck in his life, getting found alone on the church steps when he was nothing more than a toothless, slobbering infant, then getting raised in the orphanage. Having nothing at all, ever, to his name, and yes, it might make sense that the boy did need someone to help him find his way out of the feud that had swallowed up so many of the boys from this region. What didn't make sense was who it was that was suggesting the saving.

Rosco cocked his head to stare at the Duke boy, looking for what on earth would have made him say such a thing. But there would be no answers from the other side of the table. With a confused look across his face and no more words whatsoever, the Duke boy was standing up to walk over to the bar, settle his tab, and absent himself from Rosco's presence and the saloon all together.


	13. Tequila Sunrise

**13. Tequila Sunrise**

It was the choking that awakened him. His own choking so he sat up, or tried. His right arm wouldn't come with him, wouldn't respond to the commands he gave it, and although it was halfway asleep, that wasn't why. When he flopped back down onto his back and took a look, he could see the glimmer of silver encircling his wrist. The jingle of a chain accompanied his effort to bring it closer to his face for inspection, followed by the pain of metal cutting into his skin. It was then that he realized that he was wet—and not alone.

"Khee, khee," was where it started, an out-of-place, gleeful little giggle; amusement at his predicament. It echoed around a bit, two khees turning into four, then eight. The light was too bright, leaving a glaring halo around everything he tried to focus on and creating a steady thrum behind his eyes.

His left hand, which seemed to move freely and without any pain (or without much, there was an aching complaint from a stiff muscle or two) came up to rub at his eyebrows, then he let it slap back down against the hard mat on which he was lying. Let his eyes stay closed and gave some serious consideration to going back to sleep when another cold wash of water came splashing over him.

"Damn it," he hollered, fighting to sit again and forgetting all about the way his right arm was in no position to help him with that task. Wrestling with himself while his wrist got torn to shreds and there came that kheeing sound again.

"Rise and shine, boy," greeted him cheerfully and it was the worst days of his childhood all over again. Some of the women in the Sheridan Orphans Home were kinder than others when it came to the morning routine, but none of them tolerated a sleepy boy who tried to stay in bed. Rise and shine, boy—he would need an abacus to count the number of times he'd heard that. "Nobody sleeps late in the jailhouse, no matter how much carousing they did the night before."

Carousing, yeah, he might remember a little carousing. Some drinking, some cards, some betting, some winning. Some… other things that wouldn't quite come into focus.

Eventually he managed to coordinate sitting, or mostly, without having to use his right hand. It left him facing a gray wall when the annoying voice was behind him, but that was all right. It gave him a minute to mop his hair out of his eyes before glowering over his shoulder. "Damn it," came out again; his mind was stuck on that thought. Damn the morning, damn the water damn the… bars, a latticework of bars between him and his tormentor. "Rosco," he finally followed up with. Wiped his hand down his face, felt the water dripping out of his mustache and thought that just maybe Mabel was right and he should shave it off. If only because it held enough water to drown him. "What the hell did you do that for?"

He knew better, he supposed, than to call an elder and a pillar of the community by his first name. But like all the other words, it had come tumbling out before he really had time to think about it. Instinct, or maybe more like memory. Of sitting in the warmth of Miss Lavinia's kitchen at the orphanage, getting scolded for where he was really supposed to be, but she'd never kick him out. Not as long as he said all his letters for her or counted to fifty. Later, when he got older and was supposed to be smarter, he had to recite his sums, but once he proved his book learning, the cook would let him stay. After a while she'd get to talking, telling him ancient mountain yarns or yesterday's gossip. And now and again she'd lose track of who she was telling things to, and start talking about the townsfolk.

_Rosco,_ she'd say, shaking her head. _He's a good boy. He tries so hard. He's just in over his head. _

Which had left Bo with a mental image of the marshal as a skinny little boy no older than himself, stuck in quicksand and sinking fast while Lavinia held out a stick for him to grab onto. It was hard to remember that he was supposed to respect the lawman, what with that picture still stuck in his head.

But, "Boy," there would be a price to pay for that little indiscretion. Now that his eyes were halfway focused, Bo could see the marshal bending to heft a bucket. Looked heavy, looked like it was the third of four that sat there at the man's feet. If he was calculating right, Bo had already felt the brunt of what was contained in two of them, and he didn't figure he needed the other two. "You best be cheerful as long as you're a guest of mine."

"Guest," Bo snorted, because the teeth had finally meshed in the cogs of his mind. He was, apparently, in Marshal Coltrane's jail. Handcuffed to the cot, and soaked to the skin. Putting up his left hand in surrender and supplication, because a third bucket of water was getting ready to be thrown on him. "Sorry, Marshal," he said hastily. Bit his tongue against finishing off with something snide about how he didn't need a bath that bad. (Because maybe he did. Filth was sluicing off of him, dirt particles caught up in water droplets.) "I just didn't know where I was," he finally settled on saying. Seemed neutral enough to him, but the Marshal still had that bucket in his hands. "I promise," he added, shifting around on the mat, trying to figure out some way to properly face Rosco without having to sever his right hand from the rest of him. "No tricks. I wouldn't give you no trouble at all. If," was almost a plea, because one day when he wasn't looking, his legs had gotten too long for him to be truly flexible anymore. "You was to come in here and unlock this handcuff," that was binding him to the rim of the cot with all its stalwart steel strength.

"Boy," the marshal snapped back at him, but at least he was holding the bucket differently now. By the handle, not like he any longer planned to throw its contents at an unruly prisoner. "It took three of my men to get you in there last night." If his arm wasn't halfway twisted around his back, if he wasn't soaked in ice water and his chattering teeth weren't threatening to bite out his tongue, if he didn't want with everything in him just to be free enough to wrap his arms across his own chest, he might be proud to hear that. "I ain't unhooking you until I got three men here to make sure you don't go escaping. But I will," the man offered, his lips pursing into something loosely approximating a smile. "Bring you breakfast if you promise to be nice and say thank you."

It was, all things considered, a reasonable offer.

"No water," Bo countered. "Please. I ain't thirsty."

He got a chuckle for that, heard the bucket being set down as he settled himself, sitting cross-legged at what could loosely be called the head of the cot, if it had been more than a straw-stuffed mat laid over a metal frame. Still couldn't cross his arms over his chest, but he could manage – slowly and with great effort – to work the buttons of his shirt loose, left handed. Water-logged as it was it was only making him colder, so he shrugged it most of the way off his body. Was just setting to studying the bruises on his arms and chest when Rosco's tongue clicked against his teeth out there on the other side of the bars. When Bo looked up he could see the man balancing a plate on one hand and holding the skeleton key to the cell in the other.

"You are a mess," the marshal announced with unwarranted cheer. It was the morning after the night before, pain between his eyes and the world swimming in the thick soup of his mind. He was chained to a bed and surrounded by rusted steel. There wasn't much of anything that Bo could figure for old Rosco to be cheerful about. "A real mess."

But then, the marshal had himself a prisoner to torment as he pleased, and maybe that was all the man had ever wanted.

"You made the mess," he pointed out as the lawman as he came through the cell door he'd just unlocked, boots splashing in the water puddled on the floor. The plate he carried was heaped with food—eggs and bread and sausage and potatoes—which set Bo's stomach to complaining right then and there over abuse. Too little to eat in general and then last night it had gotten filled with whiskey and nothing else. He could remember that part pretty well, the drink and the cards, the bragging, and he'd been doing well, last he knew. How he'd wound up here—

But there was a plate being set down on the cot in front of him. Two forks, and that didn't make sense until the marshal made himself at home, sitting at the foot of the cot, and picked up one of them.

"I wasn't talking about the water," Rosco clarified, pointing the fork at him in some sort of a gesture about what a mess he really was, "although that's a mess, too." A big one; it was everywhere around them. The cot was wet with it, and Bo reckoned that it must be soaking into the seat of the lawman's breeches. Though Rosco didn't appear to mind or even notice.

"Dang cold," Bo pointed out, picking up the other fork with his left hand. Rosco had already begun to eat from the far side of the plate, and Bo was going to have to work quickly if he wanted to get his fair share of the food.

"Straight from the well," the marshal crowed. "Best in town. Sweet as a cupful of sugar and cold all year, even in July. Which it is now, boy, so don't you go complaining about how cold you are. It'll get plenty warm in here by noon and you'll just be begging me to douse you then." Bo had his doubts about that one. "Not that I'll do it."

"You are a mess, though," Rosco repeated when a sausage landed on Bo's soggy pants. Eating was not going well.

"If you'd unhook me, I wouldn't be," Bo pointed out. "I promise, no tricks."

That got him chuckled at some more, but it wasn't so bad. As long as the marshal was laughing or talking, he wasn't eating, which gave Bo a fighting chance at getting to some of the food.

"I wasn't talking about that, either," he got informed. "And I already told you, you ain't getting unhooked until I got me some backup here to hold you down." Well. That just sounded like an awful lot of fun, but Bo was pretty sure he could do without it.

"All right, then what was you talking about?" Bo asked, using his fingers to pick up the sausage from where it had fallen on his leg, and then popping it into his mouth. "And why am I in here?"

That got him a clucked tongue. "I know Miss Lavinia taught you better than to talk with your mouth full," Rosco scolded. "Or eat with your fingers. Now my mama made these fine victuals, and I fully expect you to eat them as if you was sitting at her table." Well, if he'd been dining at the Coltranes, he was pretty sure he would have had use of his dominant hand. And been wearing a shirt, not to mention dry pants. "Or I won't share my breakfasts with you no more." But that threat made any protests die in his throat.

"Yes, sir," he said by rote. Because he had been taught his manners, just as the marshal suspected.

"What I was talking about," the marshal began to explain, and Bo could only hope it would take him a long time to get to the point whatever it was. Because if the rules were that there would be no talking with a mouthful, it definitely behooved him to keep Rosco talking. "Was all them bruises you got on you. You had blood on your face too, but that little bath I gave you washed most of it off."

"Well," Bo answered, "I reckon them three men of yours that it took to get me in here done most of that damage." It explained some things, though. Like the way chewing set his jaw to aching. Seemed like maybe he'd taken a few punches. (And maybe he could remember the feeling of a fist crashing into face, if not the details.)

"Boy," got snorted back at him and came awfully close to a talking-with-a-mouthful infraction. "They didn't do nothing but hold you back. You was a wildcat last night. You was talking about tearing their heads off, as I recall."

Well, he never had shied away from a fight. It was a fact of life in the orphanage, at least in his early years there. Bigger children would take what they could and unless you stood up to them, you'd wind up with nothing at all.

"Them bruises came from the fight you had before I even got involved. You was getting the tar beat out of you by some of them boys you'd been carousing with. You sure you ain't thirsty?" Rosco asked as he got up off the cot and headed back toward the cell door. He left it open as he stepped outside to dip a tin cup into one of the full buckets still sitting on the floor out there.

"I'm sure," he answered back and made no threatening moves whatsoever, not while he was still cuffed to a cot and couldn't run very fast. The marshal, after all, was armed with buckets of near-ice and July or no July, Bo reckoned he didn't need any of his parts frozen off by an overzealous lawman wielding well water. "If I get thirsty I can just suck on my mustache." And, while the marshal was distracted with getting himself a drink, Bo put down his fork, grabbed a sausage in his fingers and crammed it into his mouth.

"You ought to shave that thing off, boy," Rosco informed him, bringing his still-dripping cup of water back into the cell with him. "It ain't helping you none."

"You got a mustache," Bo said, pointing out what no one could possibly miss. Thick, gray, ugly and it just about swallowed the man's lip then crawled off the corners of his mouth where it met up with his sideburns. More hair than face.

"I also got a job. A real job, not day labor." Well, it was nice to know that the marshal considered what he did a real job, and that somehow it warranted a mustache. "You're just a boy."

"I ain't neither," Bo countered.

"You just eat," Rosco ordered, "and quit contradicting me. You're a boy, and there ain't a woman in this town that wouldn't take you in. My mama ain't made me a breakfast like this since eighteen seventy-five. She made this for you. I'm lucky to get any of it." He speared a potato, held it up in the air and gestured around his next few words with it. "Miss Lavinia would have adopted you, if'n it had been fitting. She loved you like you was her own." The potato got eaten, and Rosco went after another. But that was fine, because the lawman had slowed down his own consumption and Bo was getting better with his left hand anyway. "But she didn't have no home to give you, and she was a halfbreed, so she couldn't never adopt no white boy legally. My sister Lulu wanted you, too." And what a horrifying idea that was. Bo could remember when Miss Lulu came visiting. Not exactly a volunteer, because she didn't actually do anything when she was there, other than pinch the cheeks of the little children. And, now that he thought about it, there never was anyone whose face flesh bore more fingerprints than his own on those days when Miss Lulu came to visit. "But we didn't have no room and she was just a single lady, too." She was fully white though. Bo had always known that Miss Lavinia was part Cherokee, but he'd never given much thought to the fact that it put her into an awkward position in the town. _Halfbreed_, as Rosco called her, meant more like _half a person_. To some folks in town, but Bo had loved her like a mother. A whole mother.

"Boy," the lawman said, putting his fork down. Seemed like whatever Bo could manage to get all the way from the plate into his mouth would be his to eat. "Your best bet is to shave that mustache and let some nice widow lady adopt you. You help her take care of her homestead and she'll feed and clothe you. The widow Baxley would do it, maybe old Miz Tillingham would. If'n you got rid of the mustache and smiled real pretty for them. You could finish growing up in one of their houses and you'd be safe."

"I don't need to be safe, Rosco," he answered back. Might shouldn't have, there was still food on his plate that he didn't want snatched away, and just a few steps away there were still buckets of cold water just waiting to teach him a lesson for sassing. Then again, he figured this point was worth making, whatever the consequences: "I'm a man."

But the marshal didn't make any moves—either toward food or bucket—just laughed. "You're a man," he stated back, and somehow the notion was terribly funny.

"That's right."

"Babe," marked the first time this man had called him that. Up until now he'd been _boy_, which was, as far as Bo was concerned, vastly superior. He was about to start explaining how he wasn't a baby when Rosco went on. "Last night, them three men that it took to get you in here, well, they pretty much saved your life. Or at least they saved you from broken ribs and busted teeth. When we came upon you, you was being held back by the Doolin and Johnson boys while that Ledbetter boy was punching you in the face and the gut."

Bo stood up then, forgot about plates of food and captive hands. Stumbled and halfway tripped over the steel leg of the cot on the way up, finally found himself on his feet with nowhere to go, stooping slightly to accommodate his handcuffed wrist and facing the concrete of a wall instead of the lawman he meant to confront. Felt the anger course through him at the insinuation and bit his lip against the tears that wanted to come. He was a man, he was a man—he kept reminding himself of that fact until it was safe enough to talk again without his voice cracking.

"They was not," Bo declared, but he knew he was a fool. "They wouldn't. We's on the same side, they's my friends."

Rosco was on his feet now, too. Bo looked back over his own shoulder at him, at the pity on his face and hated it. Hated it now for every time he'd seen it as a child and had smiled back into the face of it, for every time he'd told those ignorant fools who had patted his head in misplaced sympathy that he was fine, just fine.

"Boy," at least they were back to that now. "There ain't a single person in this town who wouldn't take care of you. Except them boys in the Hickory gang. They's the ones who wouldn't offer you a branch if you was drowning. Unless," and Rosco's hand was on his shoulder. Not patting, not offering sympathy, just helping him turn around and find a seat again without ripping his arm off in the process. "You could do something for them. Now you could go back there to them, and they would probably take you back. After all, they was only pounding on you because you beat them at cards, so there ain't going to be no hard feelings in the light of day. But what's going to keep them from pounding on you like that tomorrow? Sure, you can help them in a fight, but you're only one of maybe forty boys and they ain't going to cry too hard if you get yourself killed. They'll just go right on fighting just like they always did."

"No. I don't believe that. I done helped Leadbelly when he was hurt, I—"

"You been helping them as best you could, but that don't matter none. If it did, they wouldn't beat the tar out of you just for winning a few dollars in a card game. Sit down now, boy, quit fighting me."

Yeah, okay, he could do that. He could sit because he couldn't do much of anything else. Oh, he could try to make a break for it, but with the heavy steel of a cot attached to his arm, he wouldn't get far. Besides, his head still hurt and the sun was still a mite to bright for his liking.

"About the only ones in town that ain't looking out for you is them boys you think is your friends. Heck," sounded so funny coming from a lawman. Sure, Bo had been taught that good boys said heck and dang instead of the worse words, but most of the fellows involved in the feud said every cuss in the book. Seemed like the man in charge of putting them in jail ought to do the same. "Even Duke reckons you're worth saving. He's the one that told me to look out for you."

"What am I in here for?" Bo asked, because he couldn't bear to think about those other things, where his friends beat on him and the enemy looked out for him like he was no more than a helpless child. "Getting beat on?"

"No," Rosco answered, and the affronted tone that the morning had started with returned. "You're in here for gambling, fighting and public drunkenness. You get to spend the week with me, unless you got the seven dollar fine it takes to get you out."

"Seven dollars," Bo echoed, trying to get into his right pants pocket with his left hand. "That ain't so bad."

"It's more than you got. Forgot to tell you. Them boys took back your winnings when they beat you up."

"Why didn't you arrest them, then?" came out like an ache in his heart.

"Couldn't catch them. They could still run. You could only fight and scream and threaten to tear our heads off. And you're just lucky that I didn't tack threatening an officer of the law onto the charges against you, boy, and raise your penance to ten dollars or ten days served."

Bo sighed, his head dipping in resignation. A fat drop fell out of his still wet hair to land on his still wet pants.

"How much money do I got?" he asked. He figured the marshal must have checked the contents of his pockets to know that he'd been robbed, too.

"You got precisely two dollars, boy. And you'd best figure on saving that. Because when you get out of here, you're going to need it. But that's seven days away. So you just settle in for a nice stay."

And with that, the lawman picked up the plate and what was left on it, walked out of the cell, and locked the door behind him.


	14. Out of Control

**14. Out of Control**

He could act tough, he could put on a good show for that Babe Sheridan. He could pretend to have any measure of control over this town, but it was all a lie. One he told himself over and over, and then all the pretenses would fall away again, and he'd realize what a fool he was.

He had a job; he'd proffered that as legitimizing his mustache. (And left out the part where he'd grown it out thickly on the sides so it'd cover that garish, twisted scar he'd gotten on his cheek when wrestling a knife away from a drunken Jason Steele back in eighty-two.) A job and that meant he could feed his mama and sisters—or they could feed him, though it was his income that bought the food. But a marshal's pay wasn't a guaranteed thing, not like a banker's. Not like his father's.

And how he got himself paid was enough to make him wish he'd inherited his father's affinity for numbers and figuring after all.

It wasn't that he'd always minded court days, or even that he minded most. His territory covered three cities and the surrounding unincorporated towns. He'd never been sorry a single time when duty called him to court in Morganville, Wildwood or even up in Rising Fawn where he'd have to rest his horse three times on the way to the top of the mountain. But Trenton court days he looked forward to about as much as he looked forward to getting a tooth pulled. Which was to say, not at all.

Still, if he didn't go, if he didn't accept at least some portion of the subpoenas, writs and summonses that were jammed into his hands in the Trenton courtroom, there'd be nothing but beans on the table for a week while he rethought his stubborn ways.

Judge Druten over in Wildwood was a fine and reasonable man, and he'd always had a fondness for wiry and snappish little Justice Petticord in Morganville, but Trenton's Justice Hogg—well, there were words for him, but Rosco's mama had raised him better than to say them out loud. So he kept them banging around inside him where if they gave him a headache, at least they were safe from the ears of ladies.

"Rosco," the man in question greeted him, already annoyed. Like he figured he was perfectly within his rights to speak however he felt like to the duly constituted law of the land. (And maybe he was. Maybe, in his own warped and twisted way, this man ensured that Rosco would have food on his table and clothes on his back.) "Did you go up there and arrest that Hard Luck Jones yet?"

"No, sir," he answered back, hating that he had to wipe sweat off his brow. Sure it was July, and sure, he'd had a hot trek along the dusty streets from one end of town to the other to get here, but the justice in front of him would conveniently forget those things and assume that Rosco was nervous. "I ain't, and I ain't going to, neither. Ijit." That last thing, that little hiccup of a sound, well that annoyed him just about as much as it did Hogg. But if they both didn't want him to make that sort of a noise, well, the justice would have to stop giving him that bug-eyed look that asked him just how stupid he really was. And Rosco would have to stop caring just how red and shiny those pudgy little cheeks of his got in the face of being disobeyed. "The county voted down prohibition."

"So they did," Hogg agreed and Rosco didn't figure that part bothered the man too much. He reckoned that if he went back into the judge's chambers and started poking through cabinets and drawers, he'd find a few bottles of whiskey stashed away. The good stuff, not the rotgut that most of the town drank; Hogg's would come with a pedigree. "But that don't mean you can just sit idly by and let any old fool that's of a mind to go brewing up liquor in a still."

Oh? It didn't? Rosco pretty much figured it did. His logic on this was quite solid. The last three Georgia marshals who had gotten themselves killed in the line of duty had been tangled up in trying to keep folk from cooking up their own special recipes, and Rosco reckoned he liked his body best without any gunshot holes in it. Besides, he hadn't been marshal of this region for the past fifteen years without knowing a few things. Like the fact that Justice Hogg probably had some poor lackeys out there right at this moment on the outskirts of his own, expansive and heavily wooded acreage, tending to a batch of something that could at best loosely be described as whiskey. On private property, so the lawman couldn't touch them, even if he'd wanted to. And it just didn't make sense for the marshal to go enforcing the law only in cases where the accused was too poor to own the land he did his brewing on.

"I reckon," Rosco answered back, his jaw clenched in frustration, but that was all right. That was good, really, it made him sound tough and sure of himself. Like a man that was not to be messed with. "I get to choose which of them warrants I'm willing to enforce."

"Rosco," the justice said, standing up from the desk behind which he normally presided. Nothing like the giant courtrooms of Atlanta; Trenton's was small and utterly lacked for anything ornate. Just a desk for the judge, a chair from which testimony was sworn and benches for everyone else. All completely empty right now, because court was not in session. No one to try, and that explained the surliness of one Jefferson Hogg. "You ain't got the brains of a turkey." The justice shuffled over a few steps to pull out a drawer and fumble around inside. Tobacco, and he started to stoke his pipe while he did Rosco the favor of listing out all of his flaws for him. "You ain't got no reason to be choosing nothing. No one asked you to think at all. _I _decide who has committed a crime worth trying. You just got to deliver them to me."

Well, yeah, it could work that way. Probably did, in a lot of jurisdictions. But then, most judges didn't hand their marshals warrants for the arrest of men whose guilt was questionable.

Hogg was right about one thing, though. It could be quite simple, and he could be very rich, if he'd give in and leave all the decision-making to the judge. If he filled every warrant, dragged in every man that Hogg wanted to see, he'd get paid reasonably healthy fees and bear no legal responsibility for what happened next. And he might have considered such a thing if there were no such thing as the Porter-Hickory feud and he wasn't trying to keep the town's youngsters from killing each other in the name of a fight that none of them started.

"Tell me, Marshal," Hogg said, his tone conversational as he lit his pipe. Like this was nothing more than passing the morning together and wasn't it a nice one? A little hot for anyone's liking, but otherwise it was simply lovely with the sky so blue and the birds just a-twittering up in the trees. "Who do you got in your jail now that you ain't got no room for Hard Luck?"

"Ij." That sound was pure annoyance. "I got plenty of room in my jail." No, that wasn't what he meant to say. "I just ain't got no room for Hard Luck," wasn't right either. "I don't see no point in arresting only some of the moonshine makers in this town and letting others go free." There now, that was more like it. Too bad he followed it with a series of "oo" noises that made him sound nervous.

"So you done arrested that Babe Sheridan instead?" See now, that just went to prove that Hogg hadn't ever needed to ask the question in the first place. He knew exactly who Rosco had in his jail. "What's the point in holding him?" the justice asked, puffing on his pipe and making Rosco just about choke on the smoke. His eyes watered, the room swam, and Hogg went on like he hadn't noticed that he was nearly killing the duly constituted law of the town with his nasty little habit. "He ain't got no money." Which made him utterly useless to Hogg. The only people worth arresting had enough money to bribe their way to freedom, and a nearly penniless orphan didn't count for anything at all. "What did you arrest him for anyway?"

"Public drunkenness," amongst other sundry charges. It was weak, but it was better than the truth: Luke Duke told me to. Because _that _didn't make any sense at all – first of all, that the Duke boy had suggested it, and second of all, that Rosco had done it.

"Well, if men like Hard Luck wasn't making liquor," Hogg reasoned, "boys like Babe wouldn't be publicly drunk, would they?"

"Yeah, but the county done voted down prohibition." Rosco had a point in here, somewhere. Underneath the laps that his brain was doing, trying to keep up with Hogg's scheming. He might not have been a smart man, but the marshal knew right from wrong. Most days, anyway. It was just that Justice Hogg could turn that knowledge on its ear and make him feel the fool. "I reckon that it's them that drinks it that has to take responsibility for getting drunk on it."

Hogg just shook his head at dolts that managed to get themselves elected as marshal even if they didn't have any smarts to speak of.

"Here," the judge said, cramming a wad of papers into his hands. A few fluttered to the floor, but Rosco figured that was fine with him. He was only going to fulfill the warrants he agreed with anyway. There were certain flexibilities that came with his position. "Do your job. Bring these men in."

"I don't suppose," Rosco said through clenched teeth, when all he really should have done was answered with a polite _yes, sir_. Now he'd gone and started a conversation when he'd been almost done, just about ready to walk out of here and not have to see this man again for another week. "That any of these warrants is for Isaiah Hickory or Cap Porter."

The judge paused from where he'd been headed back to his desk to grab his coat off the back of his chair. It might have been July and already hot enough to bake bread on a rooftop before noon, but men like Hogg had reputations to uphold. Nothing less than shirt, vest, coat and tie for outdoor wear.

"Of course not," Hogg answered. "There ain't no reason to go bothering either of those men over nothing. Why, they're regular pillars of this community." Of course they were. Just fine gentlemen, and heck, they did the town a great service. They gave the boys of the town something to do with themselves—fighting, injuring and killing each other. "Notwithstanding, of course, the unfortunate situation that little Mary Kaye finds herself in." Yes, the young lady was with child and unmarried, a scandal that would make a less affluent family pull up stakes and run off someplace new where they could tell a fantastic lie about how she was a broken-hearted young widow. Cap Porter couldn't leave here, though. If he did, who on earth would he have to hold a lifelong grudge against? So the family would weather the crisis, one way or another, and it wouldn't be a problem, really. Just some gossip and a reason for Justice Hogg to cluck his tongue in sadness of the sort of situation he'd never find himself in. (Of course, not, he was repugnant. No woman would get close enough to him to let him impregnate her.) "In fact, I reckon I'll go over and visit with Mr. Hickory right now."

"Because you already done talked to Porter last week?" And that went to prove that Rosco knew a thing or two about the judge's activities, too. Going from one side of the feud to the other, stoking the fires so that the feud would keep going strong, just pulling more boys under its spell. Not poor boys like Babe Sheridan, since they were, as the justice had already made clear, useless. More like the sons of families with money. Big money, the sort that could be used to bribe their boys right back out of trouble.

"Rosco," Hogg answered back, slowly, deliberately, with all threats implied. In the end, this man had more power than the marshal. Rosco could arrest either patriarch, Porter or Hickory, and it wouldn't amount to anything, because Hogg wouldn't try them. They'd just go free and Rosco would get quietly killed in the night by one set of feuders or the other. "You got work to do. I'd suggest you do it."

His piece said, an unbearably smug Hogg waddled his fat frame right out the door. Which left the marshal with an armload of warrants for men that he had no intentions of arresting, and a tongue that wouldn't stop uttering ijits and gyus.


	15. Life in the Fast Lane

**15. Life in the Fast Lane**

"Well, just look at who it is," tried to sound tough and confident, not even slightly nervous. But it came from behind the muzzle of a gun, one pointed right at him. Not that he was particularly worried about it. "We been figuring you'd come here eventually. In fact, we didn't figure it would take this long."

Yeah, well. There had been distractions along the way. Demands to be met and people to satiate. Cowardly actions to be undertaken, adjustments to be made, tinkering with the plan just enough that he figured when it was done there'd be no real guilt on his shoulders. Dealing with the dead and injured, reassuring himself and his men that it had been worth it.

And maybe it had.

He'd done what Cap wanted. He'd crept up on the Hickory boys where they slept, and he'd fought them there, and even if Luke hadn't been happy about the outcome, Cap had lightened up. He'd patted Luke on the shoulder over what he figured was some kind of a victory, offered him a good meal (which Luke might have accepted if he'd thought Mary Kaye would be in attendance, but he knew she could never be seen in public with her belly swollen and no husband to explain her condition), then sent him off with a smile of near-paternal pride when he'd demurred.

And now, finally, he was free to do the only thing he'd really wanted to all along—reclaim what was his. And Emery Potter's and Homer Patterson's and Hobie Harkins', which was why they'd come along on this little mission. Yellow-eye was there, too, but that was mainly because this was a stealth mission and a good strategist just didn't try to manage those without a skilled scout.

"Well," came a second voice, different angle. Both men who had spoken were in the stables on the Hickory farm, but one was on the ground floor and the other was in the open door of the loft. "Y'all know he ain't never made a move without Porter tells him to."

"How many total?" Luke mumbled to Yellow-eye, who had been watching the place all day from a perch in an oak tree along the edge of the property.

"Four," came his answer. "Doolin," yeah, that was the first voice that had spoken, the one aiming the rifle at them right now. Dobro Doolin, and Luke had known him just about all their lives. Another one who'd attended the school up on Wildflower Hill back when Luke had, and he was a twitchy boy whose extremities never did quite manage to obey the orders his brain gave them. The fact that he was pointing the rifle at Luke's heart meant that when he fired it, the bullet would go well over everyone's heads, because Doolin never could control that nervous tic that made him jerk at all the wrong times. "Ernst Ledbetter," who was up in the loft, "Martin Braddock and Jude Emery." Yeah, that last one was the biggest problem, really. He and Grady Byrd had taken over where Thackeray had left off. Jude, the more competent of the two, had corralled some of the younger guys and given them halfway decent leadership.

"All right," Luke whispered back. It was a pretty even match, when it came right down to it. "You stay back," he told Yellow-eye, signaling to the rest of the guys in the small band he'd brought with him to move forward.

"You know what we're here for, too," Luke called across the empty field between them and the men in the stables. The farmhouse itself sat below the curve of this hill they stood on, about a half mile of lush, green grass to the east. So if this did turn into a gun battle (and Luke sincerely hoped it wouldn't), Ol' Nut would most likely crawl his bony little body under his bed and hope that no one came in to shoot him there. He might or might not make room for his doddering wife, Sarah, to join him under cover there. "I reckon you could just let us have what's ours and there'd be no reason for none of you to get hurt."

"The way I see it," came from the voice in the loft. Ledbetter, who called himself Leadbelly these days, because he figured it made him sound mean and threatening. As though he'd eaten lead, either literally or figuratively, but he was still the same noisy brat he'd ever been. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law." Another kid from the schoolyard, from back in the days when the boys would look for a solid stick and some chestnuts, then have a competition for who could hit them furthest. Ernst never was the strongest one of the bunch so he couldn't win, which nagged at him and nagged at him until he stopped trying to hit them for distance and started to aim them at the littler kids instead.

Luke had punched him over that, couldn't remember the details now of whether he'd given any warning before his fist flew, but it didn't matter. In the end Ledbetter had wound up on his seat in the dust, crying and pointing his blaming finger at Luke Duke. Who had gotten a whipping from his pa, and had given a forced apology that he hadn't meant.

And now, somehow or other, Ledbetter felt that one bloody nose from ten years ago entitled him to Luke's horse. And those belonging to three other men besides.

"Not," Luke pointed out, "when what you're possessing belongs to another man." He kept moving toward the stable, slow, steady, without fear. Talking gentle and slow like he would to a crazy man that was way past drunk on moonshine, not making any sudden moves, just strolling quiet and easy, calm. Doing his best not to spook anyone, but he meant to get what he came for and had no intentions of being deterred.

"You're wrong," Ledbetter informed him. Lazy sound to his voice, which meant he figured he had the upper hand. And maybe he did. Martin Braddock was the husky, shadowy lump on the roof of the stables, too heavy to be any of the other guys. Some sort of shiny weapon in his hands, but he was in no real position to properly aim at any of Luke's team. Jude Emery, that was the one to look out for. The only one of the bunch here with any brains and Luke wasn't thrilled about not knowing where he was. "Ain't nothing better than taking what belongs to someone else."

Couldn't worry about where Jude was hiding, couldn't show fear. Couldn't stop the approach or the fools around them would really would have the upper hand and he'd never get Traveler back.

"Like Mary Kaye Porter, for instance. You always figured she was yours," Ledbetter taunted from where he sat up there on the ledge, open doors framing him. "But then I went and took her right out from under your nose. Had my way with her and—"

It was such a small thing. Not at all threatening, at least to uneducated eyes. Just Luke's hand coming up to scratch his head. Three fingers tangling in his hair, but that fourth, his index finger, pointing straight up into the air. Ledbetter didn't see it or didn't think anything of it, just kept on talking about how he'd gotten Mary Kaye in the family way and now she was spoiled for anyone else. Got an awfully proud tone in his voice until the gun rang out from across the farmyard and the bullet embedded itself in the wood of the stables, just to the left of where Ledbetter was sitting in the open window of the loft.

Or had been. Things moved fast then. Ledbetter either fell or jumped, hitting the ground sloppily and crying out in something that sounded an awful lot like pain. Dobro Doolin fired wildly and the horses inside the stable whinnied their complaints about the noisy commotion around them.

Luke charged the ground floor opening, where Doolin was trying to hide behind the wood of the door, firing at nothing and everything all at once. Tackled the skinny fool and took away the risk that one of those stray bullets might accidentally hit someone. Kicked the rifle out of reach and cocked back his fist with intent to knock enough of the sense out of skinny Doolin that he'd be no manner of a threat, and that was when he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel against the back of his neck.

"Well, hello there, Duke." Jude Emery. Must've been on the overhang above, just waiting to drop when Luke and his men got close enough. "I can see why Doolin there was all nervous about this. You got a nasty reputation, boy." Yeah, well. He'd carefully cultivated that. Convinced everyone he was ruthless, and maybe by now he was. But that wasn't the original intent of it, to get as mean as he was pretending to be. Mostly when he started out he wanted everyone to believe he'd shoot them in cold blood simply for breathing, just so they'd surrender before he even had to pull out his gun. "And you live up to it. Most men aren't fool enough to walk toward a gun."

Then again, most men didn't know that Dobro Doolin couldn't hit the side of a barn. And most men didn't have Yellow-eye on their side, waiting for just the tiniest of signals to knock loud-mouthed dullards out of their safe little nests.

"My scout's out there," Luke informed the man standing behind him, who was holding him at bay with his hands up where everyone could clearly see he had no intentions of drawing his weapon. "Got a gun trained on you right now."

"Funny thing about your scout," Jude pointed out. "How he ain't never seem to hit nobody. Just gets close—ah, ah boys," he interrupted himself to add, calling out to Luke's men or his own, it was hard to say. Hard to think with the way his heart was pounding in his ears and Luke might not have been afraid to die, but he wasn't exactly keen on it happening right now, either. "You stay back now. You come any closer and I'm likely to have to hurt your leader here." Doolin recovered himself from where he'd hit the dirt hard when Luke took him down, and started scrambling around for his rifle. "You might want to tell old Yellow-eye to hold his fire," was the next suggestion.

"Yellow-eye is smart enough to know what to do," Luke said, and he really hoped she was. (_She_, now that was bad. He couldn't go thinking of Yellow-eye as Daisy, his cousin, the sweet, gentle girl that he used to play with in the grassy fields of the farm. Back then he'd seen to it that she had a good time, which meant getting dirty—filthy really, and her mother had shrieked all manner of misery about how girls weren't ever meant to get mud on their shoes, their dresses, their hands, faces and definitely not in their hair—but never getting hurt. Not even a splinter because she was a girl and girls were to be protected and never, not ever, even in life and death situations, to be brought into a fight. But Daisy had brought herself into this one, had gone well out of her way to insinuate herself into places that she had no business being. She'd gotten into this fight all by herself and not only that, first. And as long as she was here, she was a man, like all the other men around him. And quite probably his best hope for getting out of here alive.)

"Well, all right, Hoss. It's your life."

Hobie, Homer and Emery. A mathematical impossibility, but there it was anyway; one plus one plus one equaled zero, maybe less. Negative numbers and Luke had never really understood them too well before. How could you have negative one of something? But now he knew it, could feel with everything in him, the negativity of how there was nothing anyone could do to save him, how he was going to die with less than nothing, because he hadn't even avenged the death of his family. Was working on some pretty serious self-pity and general morose feelings while Doolin checked over his retrieved rifle for damage, shrugged his shoulders and hefted it to aim it in the general direction of Luke's men. Got downright miserable at the thoughts in his head and it was right about then that Ledbetter hobbled around to where they were standing. Must've landed wrong on that left foot.

"Well," Ledbetter said with his fool's smile at Luke's stiff posture and raised hands. "Damn, Jude. You done caught yourself a turkey. Or a chicken."

"Yeah," Jude answered back dryly, before Ledbetter could get to hopping on his one good foot and clucking out chicken noises. "We got 'em and you done a fine job." Just as calm as could be, easy faith that he could handle anything that came his way. If he wasn't pressing cold steel against Luke's neck right now, leaving him to raise his hands in utter supplication and feel like a complete fool, Luke could see liking the other man.

"'Tweren't nothing," Ledbetter answered back, and Luke figured that was true, if you considered falling out of the hayloft and (losing your gun, the bragging brat that was standing in front of him had no weapon on him anywhere, just a smug face reflecting the lantern light coming from somewhere inside the stables) and landing so badly you couldn't walk right _nothing_, that was. "This boy ain't got no brains. He ain't nothing but a dimwit."

Luke bit back as much of the laugh as he could, kept it from being a full out guffaw, anyway, but a snort still escaped.

"What—" Ledbetter started.

"Easy," Jude Emery cautioned, like he was steadying a nervous horse, but it wasn't that. Ledbetter was more of a jackass.

"What," Ledbetter went on, ignoring Jude, ignoring the nervous twitch of Doolin. Ignoring the fact that Yellow-eye's gun had to be trained on Jude, had to be aimed for the kill shot, even if the scout had no real interest in hurting anyone. She (he, _he_ and Luke needed to get his brain straight) had loyalties, and no matter the situation, Luke came first. "Do you think you're laughing at?" came the back end of Ledbetter's taunt. "You're dead. You're dead, and I've got your horse and I've got your girl and—no. I had your girl, she wasn't hardly worth it and now she's got something of mine. Just growing there in her belly and she thought I loved her, but I never—" was enough. Was quite enough, enough of enough and more than enough, really, to make Luke's hands come out of their appeasing position and curl themselves into fists. To quit worrying about the cold metal against his neck, to take that step forward and use his knuckles to cram those words right back into Ledbetter's mouth, to feel the sharp, hard pain of bone crashing into bone and teeth and the wet pop as the jackass's cheek flattened and his lips opened without him even meaning for them to. A holler of pain when the motion of it sent him back, trying to catch his balance on that bad foot, and then Ledbetter was down on his backside in the hay, showing no signs of getting up again.

A frozen second and then it all sped up again. Gunshots ringing out and the angles were confusing. One, at least, had come from Doolin's nervous gun, but Homer Patterson had already come on the run to tackle him. A shriek of agony from somewhere behind him, but Luke couldn't worry about that. He rounded on Jude Emery, half expecting to get shot in the face, but the man's gun was pointing at the sky. No firing, just the lanky leader hollering for calm and absolutely no one listening to him. So Luke hit him, too. Watched him sit down hard and reached for his own gun to put an end to this thing, but Jude's hands went up. Gun, still not aimed at anyone, in one and the other pointing at it.

"It ain't loaded, and it don't work anyways," Jude informed him. Luke reckoned he could stand here all night asking questions about what kind of a fool tried to guard a stable full of stolen horses with a useless gun, and how Jude really expected to be a leader with a worthless weapon—or he could move. He could let his men hold the Hickorys at bay and he could walk into the stables and retrieve what belonged to them. So he did, marched right in and didn't bother to check his back because he knew he was covered. Found Traveler first, of course, then singled out the other three from the dozen or so that rightly belonged in there. Considered, for half a second, taking more than he was owed. Tit for tat, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not when the horses he'd be rustling belonged to someone who would miss them as much as he had missed his.

So he took what belonged to him and his men, and nothing else. Quickly set to bridling them, then led them out and handed three sets of reins over to Homer Patterson. He mounted Traveler and turned to look over his shoulder at Ledbetter, lying flat on his back and showing no inclination to move, then turned his head to meet Jude Emery's eyes.

"You might," he advised, "want to get yourself a better gun." Traveler pranced a step or two, but Luke held him in place for a second more. "And some better men. What you got there is a bunch of depraved children." Then he nudged Traveler's flank and they cantered out into the darkness.


	16. Wasted Time

**16. Wasted Time**

Yellow-eye was supposed to ride with Luke. To stay in the shadows and wait until the horses were liberated, then Luke was supposed to come and let her mount with him.

"Take him to Doc's," had been Luke's new instructions, and Yellow-eye was riding double with Emery Potter on his horse Rocky, instead. Because the skinny little man had gotten clipped by an accidental bullet, one that Dobro Doolin probably hadn't even meant to fire. The poor fellow just had too much energy, didn't know how to hold steady while all the world around him moved, so he'd squeezed the trigger on some sort of reflex. Had he been aiming at the scrawny Potter, he would undoubtedly have hit a tree on the other side of the clearing.

Could have been a combined effort, Doolin's twitchy hand and Potter's knocking knees, and it didn't matter how it had happened. Emery was kind of slumping against the horse's neck while Yellow-eye sat behind and urged them to a gallop through the trees in the straightest line possible to old Doc Cooter's. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

But then, Yellow-eye wasn't ever supposed to hold a gun with the sites set directly on a man's heart either. Near-misses, the scout had no problem with those. Actually considering killing someone, cleanly and in one shot, was another thing entirely.

So she might just as well stop thinking of herself as this male Yellow-eye critter right here and now. Might as well admit that those shaking hands, one clutching onto the reins and the other swatting poor old Rocky's backside, belonged to a woman, and not only that, but a woman raised to be a lady. Not to bind her chest or wear breeches, not to speak roughly or get dirty, and never, ever to hold a gun. Not to even point a finger, much less a .44 caliber revolver, at any man.

"Come on, Emery," she called to the man in front of her, not caring that she had forgotten to keep her voice low and calm, not caring that she wasn't being particularly gentle, either. Caught somewhere between what she was raised to be and what she'd become—a mannish woman, maybe. "Hang on."

He wasn't hurt all that bad, she didn't think. Not life and death, anyway, though she could only halfway imagine the pain. About the worst injury she'd ever gotten was that time she'd caught the flesh of her arm on the Thompsons' barbed wire fence a year back. Luke had poured whiskey into the wound, then given her the remainder of the bottle to drink while he'd sewn it up with ugly and uneven black stitches. Every bit of the incident had made her want to holler, and the whiskey had only helped but so much. So even if Emery was just about limp with his agony, at least he was quiet about it and she could be grateful for that.

(Mostly. Somewhere inside she still wanted him to be more alert, to stop trying to lose consciousness up there, because it was hard enough to urge a horse to this sort of speed when it was carrying two riders, and even harder when one of them was leaning all of his weight in the wrong direction. Besides, what if she was wrong about it being not that serious a wound? What if he died out here? She'd be trying to keep hold of a dead man while moving at a gallop, that was what.)

A whimper from up front seemed to be some sort of acknowledgement, so she just kept going, kept going—

It wasn't that far, hadn't ever been that far to get from the north side of Daniel's Creek to the south before. Probably didn't take half as long as it felt like this time, either, but there it was, finally. Upright gray house, stiff and sturdy while the trees all around swayed in the breeze, scratching at the moon overhead. Yellow glow from the downstairs windows, which meant that Doc Cooter was at least awake and she wouldn't have to go banging on his door for entry.

"Whoa," she mumbled, pulling back on the reins, but old Rocky seemed to recognize that this was the destination because he was already slowing. She dismounted, then looked up at Emery, still clenched around the horse's neck. Thought about how it had taken both Luke and Homer Patterson to get him up there, and though down ought to be easier than up, decided against trying to handle it alone. "You just hang on, Emery," she counseled, though the way he was clinging to his perch indicated that he had no intentions of doing otherwise. Convinced that the poor, pained man wasn't going anywhere, she sprinted toward the doctor's porch.

"Enos!" The church sexton wasn't supposed to be there, wasn't supposed to open the door before she got that far, wasn't supposed to catch her by the elbow as she stumbled up the steps. Wasn't supposed to hear her voice, high and breathy and utterly feminine to her own ears.

"Hello, Yellow-eye," he answered, matching her for nervousness, for talking too fast and too high. "I was just getting Doc Cooter to take a look at my," pause there, jittery smile, "ingrown toenail and I heard you riding up. 'That sounds like trouble,' I said and then—"

"Yellow-eye," Cooter interrupted. "What are you doing here?" But he knew, he had to. No one from the Porter gang would show up at his door unless someone was badly hurt. "Is it Duke?"

"No," she said, trying with everything in her to sound calm, to keep her voice low and steady. She'd figured, back on that day when Luke was sewing the skin on her arm back together, that the doctor's office could be her undoing someday. Any wound she ever got that was big enough to require real doctoring would bring about the demise of Yellow-eye, and there she'd be, Daisy Duke all over again. But it wasn't going to happen tonight, not if she kept her wits about her. "It's Emery. He got shot in the leg," she pointed over to where he was still cleaved to the horse like it alone could save him. "The knee, I think." But the men weren't listening to her, they were hustling over to get Emery down, Enos hobbling on one booted foot and one bare.

"Hold the door for us," Doc Cooter called as they dragged an ashen Emery down to where they could carry him, barely conscious as he was. Seemed like the poor man had decided that he'd stayed awake long enough. "Cletus!"

A second later, Doc's assistant was there to take the burden from Enos and help carry Emery into the office at the back of the house.

"You two," Doc ordered her and Enos as they followed along uselessly, "tear up some bandages." Then the door to the office slammed, leaving her alone with Enos.

Sometimes, she figured, it wouldn't be so bad to be Daisy Duke again. Not exactly the Daisy she'd once been, not the one that had been promised to Milo Beaudry, because she still didn't want that life.

"Come on," Enos said, guiding her by her elbow, and it almost did make her feel like a lady again. Until she realized that she couldn't be, not now, and shook herself out of his grip. Smiled guiltily and followed after him anyway. "Sheets are in here." Yes, they were, piles and piles of them taking up half of a room that had little else in it. She'd never thought before about how many bandages the feud had used up, how many it would keep right on using until it ended or everyone who'd been involved got killed or too badly hurt to keep on fighting.

It wouldn't be so bad to leave all of this behind, to be Daisy Duke, if she could choose who Daisy Duke got to be. If there weren't so many rules about marriage and family life, if she could be Daisy and enjoy adventure, both. Heck, if she could be Daisy and just pick who she wanted to spend her life with, instead of having it decided for her, maybe she'd do it.

But all this thinking about herself wasn't doing anyone a lick of good. Emery was in there bleeding, while Doc Cooter and Cletus waited for bandages, and what was she doing to help? She stuck her hand into the mound of white cloth, felt something warm, hard, moving. Enos's fingers. Silly little giggle from him and she hurried to move her hand away. Found a sheet nowhere near the one he grabbed, and pulled it from the pile. Started tearing.

"It's okay," Enos said. "Your secret's safe with me."

"Safe?" she asked, feeling flushed and lightheaded. In a minute Enos would be calling Doc back to wake her up out of a swoon. "Secret?" she added. Ought to be concerned, ought to be upset and protesting having any secret at all, but she couldn't.

It was one thing to daydream about going back to being Daisy, to imagine a life without the feud. If Luke would walk away, she could, too. By now Milo Beaudry had probably found someone else to get engaged to; maybe he was even married. So she might just be safe from that particular fate, but it didn't matter. Because she was the biggest fool who had ever lived. She had, she quite suddenly realized, given her heart to Enos Strate. Not on purpose, not even consciously. It had happened somewhere between _hello_ and _ingrown toenail_—she'd lost her heart (and her mind) and there was no getting it back now. And the sexton of the church, what on earth would he want with her? A girl pretending to be a boy, fighting in a feud, dirt under her nails with her hair in a hacked-off mess, and she'd never make a proper wife for him.

"I reckon," Enos told her, "you's scared of the sight of blood. You get awful pale when you're looking after someone that's hurt. It's okay though. I won't tell nobody."

"Oh," she answered. Considered setting him straight, about how blood didn't much faze her, how she'd seen plenty by now. She wasn't keen on people dying, but that wasn't what left her pale in Enos's presence. She met his eye, and just about blurted the whole thing out.

"Yellow-eye, Enos! Where's them bandages?" got yelled from the inner office, so she settled for a quick smile before hustling off to help Doc Cooter take care of Emery.


	17. Too Fast to Live

**_Author's note: _**_For Dixie - feel better soon! In the meantime, here's something to read...  
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_And thanks to everyone else who has been reading along on this adventure, especially to those who stop by and say 'hi' along the way.  
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_This is a long chapter (at least for this story) but there's some critical information that gets exchanged, too.  
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_Reminder: __This story was also published on AO3 because it was originally written with lyric epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Ffdotnet doesn't want those lyrics there, and I can respect that. However, I felt that they were important to the way in which the story developed. Especially in this case, where I named the section based on a lyric in the song, vs. it's actual title. You can find a link to the story in its entirety on my profile page._

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><p><strong>17. Too Fast to Live<strong>

He might not have had a lot of schooling, but he was a quick learner. By the third day he'd figured out that getting up before Rosco was the key to choosing his own method of bathing. If he slept too long, the buckets of cold water would remind him that cleanliness was next to Godliness, or that early birds got worms and stayed dry. (Or that the marshal had a twisted sense of humor. And just maybe that he was a lonely man, because breakfast was always shared on the space of Bo's small cot.)

At least he had the mobility of both hands now; Rosco hadn't insisted on three men to hold him down, but Big Ed Little had been plenty enough, pinning him to the cot with all his weight while the marshal unhooked his right hand from the cuff. Bo had eked out an apology upon hearing that he'd scratched Big Ed's face in the brawl that got him arrested. He figured that it wouldn't do him any harm to offer whatever sort of olive branch he could to the one man in town that was bigger than him.

The third day, he sat up the second that he heard the main door to the jailhouse swing shut. Got a disappointed-sounding _gyu_ when he announced that if it was all the same to Rosco, he'd drink his water from a glass this morning. The buckets had shown up just like clockwork and it had been explained to him that he had to take a bath anyway, but he'd counted himself fortunate that he was allowed to do it with a rag instead of a full-out dousing. Breakfast had happened and Bo had pouted through most of it.

"What's the matter, boy?"

But how did you tell the marshal, the very man who had seen fit to put you behind bars, that you'd expected to be rescued by now? That somehow or other you'd figured that you mattered enough to a few people that they'd decide you were worth breaking out of jail?

"I reckon I expected I'd get some visitors," seemed like the best way to put it. Besides, even if they hadn't been able to break him loose, he really would have figured on Leadbelly and Doolin to at least have shown up by this point. Not necessarily to say they were sorry, because losing at cards was serious business and grudges could be held for years over games gone bad. But to commiserate, maybe, to see if his bruises had faded and whether the cut on his lip had scabbed over. To laugh at him, even; he would accept that because it meant that he existed in their minds even when he wasn't right there in front of them, that he was at all memorable.

"Who was you expecting? Miss Lavinia's done passed, oo-oo…" those sounds at the end like old Rosco's brain had just caught up to what his tongue had said, and didn't entirely approve. Something about respect for those who were gone and maybe his mother would take her parasol to his head if he wasn't careful. "She would have come to see you, though," came out a little more thoughtfully. "If she was still here. I could get my sister Lulu to come, if you want."

Bo bit back the cackle that wanted to come out of his mouth, didn't figure it was wise to go laughing at the man who was holding him captive. Sort of, after that first day when he'd been so careful about keeping Bo chained to the bed, Rosco had been pretty lax about security. He still came into the cell and sat with him over breakfast and last night he'd done it for supper, too. "That's all right," he answered, guessed he'd done a good job of keeping the nervous laughter out of his tone.

Bo figured that if he really wanted out of here, he could work out a way. Rosco was strong enough, but he wasn't young and he probably wasn't all that fast anymore. There were ways to get past him if that was his goal, and he could probably make his way around Big Ed Little, too, if he had to. Thing was, freedom only meant something to him right now if he had somewhere to go afterward and without Leadbelly making any kind of an effort to see him, he wasn't sure that he did. Other than back to Miss Mabel, but Rosco would find him there and even if he didn't, Bo could only stay with her so long. He was pretty, but he wasn't female, and he wasn't willing to earn a living the way all the flower- and gemstone-named girls did.

Rosco didn't seem to take it too personally that Bo wasn't interested in a visit from his sister. He just finished up his breakfast then stepped back out to leave Bo alone with his cot, the bars and a bucket of water in case he changed his mind about needing it thrown on him or something. The rest of the day came and went with the marshal tending to whatever needed tending, then coming back to check on him one last time before leaving him for the night. And maybe it wasn't so bad having bars around him when there was also a roof between him and the thunderstorm that rocked the valley that night.

The next morning he cut it a little close. Must've missed Rosco's first entrance, because by the time he sat up there was already a bucket being carried in. A silly little grin passed across the marshal's face when he raised his hands in some sort of sign that he was fully awake and didn't need any help in that department.

"All right, but you'd best do a mite better job of getting yourself clean than you did yesterday. It's visiting day."

"Rosco," he complained, took a second to wonder why neither of them even seemed to notice how he called the lawman by his first name all the time. Then he had to stop that, because there was only one possibility when it came to visitors. Lulu.

"Don't fuss at me, boy," the marshal commanded with as much authority as he could muster. "Or I'll give you a bath myself. And it won't be my fault that you're doing your visiting in wet clothes."

He nodded his head that he understood, even if his eyes squinted down into a glare. He set to cleaning himself anyway, cheeks especially, since they were about to be pinched within an inch of their lives. And just maybe it had been long enough since anyone had seen fit to pinch his cheeks that he wouldn't halfway mind them being pinched anyway.

"Breakfast is gonna be late," Rosco informed him and that just about sealed the deal. Bo figured he had about a half hour to harden all the blood vessels in his face against clenching fingers, if only he knew how to do such a thing. "I got things to do."

So he got left alone with not a whole lot to distract him, other than the sound of his stomach grumbling.

Sometime that felt an awful lot like a full hour later, the door to the jailhouse banged open again, and bickering ricocheted off the walls.

"Dagnabbit, Rosco!" Bickering that was taking place between two loud, distinctly male combatants. "I got it. I said I got it and," nope, that wasn't Miss Lulu at all, though the condescending tone would make perfect sense coming from her. "That means—" a little hitch in the hollering there as the man calmed himself down. "I got it," said far more pleasantly, in a tone much more fitting for the pastor of a church. "Well, hello there," Jesse said, as he rounded the door frame well enough to see him, with Rosco following behind still mumbling things under his breath about how he was just trying to help.

And Jesse really did look like he needed the help, too. Half stooped and his arms wrapped tightly around a fat-bellied iron pot, but, "I got it Rosco," he said again. Quietly, gently, soothing like the ladies in the orphanage used to talk to him when he'd scraped a knee and they needed him to calm down long enough for them to tend to it.

So the marshal went back to close the outside door, which left Bo to watch the slow steps of an older man who was clearly bearing more weight than was wise for him. But there was that latticework of bars between them and no way for Bo to offer to help him with the load.

"What's that?" he asked because if he couldn't help he could at least talk. Maybe even take the man's thoughts away from from the burden he was carrying.

"Well, now," Jesse puffed out between inward gasps for air. Face a rosy pink and shiny, and it sure was hot out there for being so early. Bo wondered if Rosco had offered to dump a bucket of well water over the pastor's head yet. "That's the surprise. Marshal," he added, all civil politeness now that whatever it was that had them fussing at each other like an old married couple had passed. Rosco was behind Jesse now, just fidgeting because he'd been chastised like a little boy and even if he was a big, bad marshal with a pair of guns at his hips and the power to arrest and hold a man for any reason he deemed appropriate, there still lurked inside him the memory that when you'd been hollered at like that, you kept quiet until the yeller calmed down.

Which worked out just fine, because it was one of those silent conversations anyway. The sort where Jesse tipped his head toward the cell door so that the man with all the keys hooked to his gun belt would unlock it. Which got answered by a raised eyebrow from the marshal, a wordless, _oh, so now you need my help?_ A sigh, a shrug (at least as much of one as could come from a man lugging a heavy pot), a nod that served as some sort of an apology, and then Rosco was scooting over to be a good and helpful little boy.

"Thank you, Marshal," the pastor said magnanimously and a silly little grin broke out across Rosco's face, looking just like Bo figured he used to whenever Miss Lavinia patted him on the head for fetching her a spoon that was all the way on the other side of the orphanage kitchen.

Jesse stepped inside and set his pot down with a heavy clang. Solid foundations of jailhouses shouldn't ever vibrate like that. Stood up out of his crouch and wiped his hands on his trousers, like that was a fitting gesture for a man of the cloth. (But Jesse never had misled anybody about how perfect and pure his cloth was. The man was nothing more nor less than a reformed moonshiner, and there wasn't much of anything polished about him, even if he did spend Sundays up in the pulpit these days.) Bo reached for the lid on the pot and got his hand slapped, so he stepped back and sat on his cot while Jesse stood there, hands on hips and surveying his surroundings. Maybe he was looking for firewood to set under that pot, maybe he figured on heating up the contents in here, but Bo was pretty sure old Rosco would have a complaint or two about that notion.

But no, Jesse marched back out of the cell while Bo and the marshal caught each other's eyes, asking silently what on earth the old man was up to. Nothing to do but stay in their current positions as he fussed and fidgeted around the place until he found what he wanted. The chair that normally sat on the far side of a desk that Rosco used from time to time to fill out this or that form. The marshal didn't much care for the chair – he couldn't, what with how him sitting in it led to mumbles and grumbles over the things a man had to do to get paid – but he clearly didn't want it moved, either.

"Now, Jesse," he complained, but got nothing more than a hand waved in the air as an answer while the pastor dragged the chair, tooth-grating sound of metal grinding against cement, all the way into the cell. Looked at it there and seemed happy and proud about his ingenuity. For a second, then he looked back up to see Rosco just about having kittens over his moved furniture and frowned a little.

"Thank you," the pastor said again, when what he really wanted was to tell Rosco to quit fretting. "For everything, Rosco. You know this old back of mine won't take too kindly to sitting on that little cot. Or the floor."

A few more complaining mumbles from the marshal didn't do anything but keep them all sort of frozen right where they were – Bo reckoned he didn't want his hands slapped again, Rosco figured he still had a few valid points about his disrupted furniture and Jesse—

Jesse finally gave up and sat down. Looked over at Rosco again and waited while the marshal hemmed and hawed in the open doorway of the cell. Must've gotten tired of it, or decided that the marshal was too slow at getting hints or something.

"I reckon you got things you got to do," Jesse informed him. "Like keeping the peace." _Or if not that, just plain leaving because I'm going to reprimand this here boy and I figure it'd be best to do it without witnesses._ Which was one benefit to the old-timer ministering to the people instead of serving them moonshine – now he was halfway obligated to see that his constituents made fools of themselves in private instead of in public.

"Gij," Rosco answered. His lips kept moving after that, but no more words came out. Jesse raised his eyebrows at him like he was waiting for the end of that sentence. "Goo," Rosco added and that cleared it right up. "I guess I'll just go and," he started, shutting the cell door with a dissonant bang that announced his annoyance better than anything he'd tried to say ever could. Twisted the key in the lock, leaving Jesse and the prisoner on the inside and himself on the outside. "Enforce laws then."

"That's a good boy," Jesse consoled as the lawman ijited and fidgeted his way out of the jailhouse, closing the outside door behind him. "Now," the gleeful pastor said, confidentially. Rubbed his hands together like they needed warming up, but it wasn't that. He was just preparing his right hand for the difficult task of lifting the top from the blackened iron pot, unveiling the contents as though they were a special gift. "There," he grunted, sitting back and putting the top down on the floor between them. Bo leaned forward to get a better idea of what they were dealing with here; the shadows made it hard to see, but there was a smell. Spices, sauce, something else—

"Rattlesnake chili," Jesse announced, just as pleased with himself as if he'd presented Bo with a bar of gold. Which was fine, because rattlesnake chili was far more valuable than any supposedly precious metal, at least as far as Bo was concerned. "Lord," the white-haired man said, bowing his head. One eye open to look up at him and Bo was quick to duck his own head down. "We thank you for this bounteous meal that thou hast set before us. Amen. Go on, Babe. Dig in." There were, he could see now, two spoons already in the pot, Jesse fished one out, handed it to him, then took the other for himself. It was enough, almost, to make a man forget that he'd just been called by a lousy nickname. "I know it's your favorite."

Now, that right there was a mighty interesting thing for the man to say. As far as Bo knew, he'd never confessed any such thing to Jesse, not ever in his life.

"Bah," the pastor said after swallowing a mouthful, and it was only then that Bo realized he'd been staring at him. "Miss Lavinia told me," he confessed to what Bo never got a chance to ask. Waved his hand in the air like that was the end of the conversation. "Eat," he commanded, sticking his spoon back into the pot to fish out some more.

Well. Bo didn't have to be told twice. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and started scooping out hefty spoonsful of chili. Licked his lips and used his shirtsleeve to wipe his mouth. Figured he ought to have better manners, except Jesse was doing just about the same thing.

"Miss Lavinia," Bo announced around a mouthful, "wouldn't never have made rattlesnake chili for breakfast."

"She was a fine woman, that Lavinia," Jesse mused. "But there was some things she just had her rules about and there was no getting around them."

"How well did you know her?" Because everyone in Dade County knew just about everyone else in Dade County, give or take a few loners up in the hills, and then there were the laborers in the mines. Still, now that he thought about it, he'd never seen Jesse and Lavinia even speak to one another, though they had quite obviously known each other.

"That, my friend," came his answer between bites. "Ain't none of your business."

"That well, huh?" Bo said, and he could just about feel Miss Lavinia whapping his backside with the bristled end of her broom. She wasn't one for gratuitous hitting, the cook wasn't, but she'd nudge a cheeky boy along pretty powerfully with her various cleaning and cooking apparatus.

Jesse's face, half hidden in beard though it was, took on an affronted look. One that tried to put Bo in his place, but didn't last long enough to work. Flushed a little pink in the cheeks, and the whole look ended in a self-conscious wink.

"She was a fine woman, that Lavinia. Just about as upstanding as any woman could ever be, so don't you go besmirching her name, Babe." He would never think to do such a thing. "We had us proper dates here and there when she wasn't tied up at the orphanage wrangling naughty little boys. We went to the apothecary, just like young folk, had us ice cream and sweets, and I walked her back to the orphanage. Didn't never do nothing more than steal a kiss."

Now that was a sweet little bedtime story. Bo had heard its like before, but no one that he had ever known had lived that kind of a life. Things were pretty hardscrabble for orphans grown up into young men. Most of them wound up at Miss Mabel's at one point or another, doing a whole lot more than kissing.

"How come?" he asked, didn't look at the man. Figured he was being disrespectful in asking, and then again, Jesse wasn't acting precisely like a pillar of the community right now. His feet were up, boot soles resting on the steel of the bed frame, and he was slouching as he ate rattlesnake chili straight out of the pot. Reddish-orange stain in his otherwise pristine white beard, and the oldster was enjoying himself.

"Because I was a fool." Jesse's spoon banged around the pot as it dug blindly for more chili while his eyes stared out at nothing. Seeing the past maybe, ghosts of people gone and things-that-used-to-be. Old folks did that sometimes; Bo figured it had something to do with slowing down. Being still and sitting on porches in rocking chairs, and ghosts could come visit you there. Didn't work the same for youngsters, running around, working, courting, feuding, and just plain being young. "I got mixed up about my priorities, fought against the way I thought she wanted to change me. Then she was gone and I figured out that it wasn't for her own sake that she wanted me to stop being such a mule-stubborn dunderhead. It was for me, because I could be better things." Like a man locked in the jail, eating rattlesnake chili straight from the pot without a napkin in sight. Miss Lavinia would be so proud. "Just like you. You got all the choices in the world in front of you, and what do you do? Start feuding. Miss Lavinia would swat your backside for that if she were here."

Maybe so, but she wasn't. She was gone and he was too old to be protected and raised by the likes of her anyway. He was a man now, and his decisions were his alone.

"What're you doing in here, anyway?" Jesse asked him, his face a mask of pure curiosity, like he didn't know. And maybe he didn't. There'd been plenty of time for Rosco to explain it all to the town pastor, but then again, the two of them had been sniping at one another when they got here. Maybe that was all they'd done, walking all the way down Monroe Street and up Main.

_I ain't got no place better to be._ It was the truth, or one truth anyway. But then there was the truer truth: "Public drunkenness, gambling and fighting, I think. I got the full list that first morning," when the cold water had been dripping out of his hair and down his back while he fought with handcuffs that showed no inclination toward letting him go. "Mostly, I'm here because I ain't got the seven dollar fine it would take to get me out."

"Well, that's as good a reason as any, I guess," Jesse said. And, oddly, seemed perfectly at peace now. No more lecturing, just slouching and eating and that one hand that would come up to rub his belly every now and then.

"Pastor Jesse," the name still sort of stumbled on his lips. Most of his life he'd known the man as Crazy Old Jesse or That Old Coot, Jesse. The men who stood around in the wheelwright's shop sometimes called him Moonshiner Jesse, and that was about the kindest name the man had for most of Bo's growing up years. "What did Miss Lavinia say about me?"

"That you was a stubborn cuss, but cute as the dickens. And that you could smile your way out of any kind of trouble, if you was of a mind to."

And he felt one of those getting-out-of-trouble smiles working its way across his face now.

"They don't work on me," Jesse warned him. "Besides, you got chili sauce in your mustache. If you're going to keep that thing," yeah, everyone talked about it like it was some sort of a caterpillar that had crawled right up onto his lip and taken up residence there, but Bo figured there was some jealousy in that. Not everyone could grow such a pretty thing on their face. "You got to keep it clean."

"Don't worry," Bo informed him. "Rosco will take care of that for me." Got a raised eyebrow, and decided not to elaborate on the odd bathing rituals that took place here in the jailhouse. Jesse probably knew them anyway—he must've spent a night or two in here himself, back in his crazy days. The man was way too comfortable behind bars. But Bo didn't want to pursue that line of thought, not when he still had pressing questions on his mind. "No, I mean about how I was found. About the note, or the blanket, or anything at all."

He used to ask her sometimes. _Miss Lavinia, where did I come from?_ It was a ritual, almost a game. _Could I be from Virginia?_ He hadn't known where Virginia was, but it was one of the first place-names he'd ever heard, the first time he'd ever considered anyplace that was not-here. _I don't think so, Babe_, she'd answer. It went on from there when he learned the names of other places. _Could I be from Atlanta? Tennessee? New York?_ (_Probably not_, _maybe_, and _absolutely not_.) When he had gotten a little older it had become more serious. Questions about any hints left behind with him, anything the Reverend Webster had ever said before he abandoned the town in a crotchety fit in eighteen eighty-four, leaving behind an empty pulpit and a bunch of unanswerable questions. _I don't know, Babe_, she'd always said, but half the time he figured she had some nuggets of information she wasn't willing to share. Then she had passed on and there'd been no one left to ask. Besides, he decided he was too old to go pestering people for answers anymore. Mostly.

"Babe," Jesse said, his tone dark and thoughtful. "Miss Lavinia didn't never talk about that sort of thing when it came to you. I don't reckon she ever thought about who your parents was." Because, boiled down to its simplest elements, that was what Bo was asking for. Who he was or who his folks had been and why they had left him behind instead of keeping him or taking him wherever they went. "There's plenty of orphans in these parts, from the war and the feud and that influenza outbreak in seventy-nine. Some knew their parents and some didn't, but Miss Lavinia, I don't figure she gave too much deep thought to who yours were. The way I see it," the man paused there to lick his spoon clean. Looked every bit the toddler sucking candy off a stick and didn't even slightly resemble a pious man of the cloth. "She wished you was hers. She wasn't never the best one to ask where you came from."

"Well," Bo asked, and he'd had his elbows on his knees all along, all the better to be close to the food. But now, if it was possible, he was leaning even further forward. Any more and he'd come toppling off the cot, and get some fresh bruises overtop of the ones that were nearly healed. Then Rosco would tack more time onto his sentence for fighting, even if the only thing he fought with was the floor. "Then who is?"

Jesse dropped the spoon onto the cot, both hands coming behind his head as he sat there all stretched out and just looked at him. Stared, really, another one of those things you wouldn't expect a pastor to do. Rude, almost, and then the old man's head kind of tipped to the side.

"Well, I don't know nothing about how you come to be on the church steps, Babe. But them blue eyes of yours and that chin… you're tall enough, too." Yeah, he was tall enough to look down at most men, and to reach things off of high shelves, too. That didn't have much of anything to do with anything—unless (and looking at the twinkle there in Jesse's eyes…) it did.

"What?" he asked, tried to be calm about it. Nonchalant, like it didn't make a difference to him one way or another. Begging, he'd been told, wasn't attractive and furthermore, was annoying. So he did his best not to beg with his mouth or his eyes. It was a true test of his patience.

"Well, you could pass for old Jedediah, I reckon. Leastwise, back when Jedediah was a boy like you." Boy, man, he really ought to be arguing about which he was, but that could wait. At least a minute or two while his brain worked through all the people he knew and whether any of them had ever been called Jedediah, give or take a few nicknames.

"Jedediah?" he finally gave up and asked. "Who's that?"

"More like who was that," Jesse corrected, no longer looking at him or at anything Bo could see. Eyes blank like he was staring at the past again, like it was moving pictures in front of him. "Jedediah was a good man, a good friend to have. I knew him from when I was young enough to go barefoot in short pants, sitting on the mud bank of Daniel Creek with a willow-branch fishing pole in my hand. We was raised together, give or take; on the same property anyway. Opposite ends, his family farming half, and my family farming the other half. Grew corn on the hillside. It's all grown over now, nothing but weeds where there used to be crops. Partway up Lookout Mountain, where the summers was cool and when they wasn't, there was always the creek to jump into. My mama used to say that me and Jedediah was two peas from the same pod. If, that was, peas could have muddy feet."

Sounded wonderful. Perfect, really. To have a mother and a built-in best friend, to have a farm with the wilderness around, and a cool creek full of fish. Just about everything Bo might ever have wanted in one place. "My mama didn't take too kindly to muddy feet on her wooden floors. My daddy put them floors in himself, just to make her happy. 'No earthen floors for my bride,' he'd said, and she flushed up a pretty pink and kissed him. She was particular about them floors, though. No dirty feet on them." Jesse's voice slowed to a stop there, like remembering was hard work, and he needed a nap before saying more. Or maybe it was the chili filling his belly that made him need a rest.

"What about me looking like Jedediah?" Bo asked, because that was the important thing here. Wood floors came and went, but people that Bo might or might not resemble were awfully rare.

"Well, of course, it was a long time ago now. Jedediah was a year older than me and I turned seventy-four last spring." _Happy belated birthday_, Bo kept himself from saying. _Now quit stalling and tell me who this Jedediah was_. "But Jedediah, he married off when we weren't much beyond them fishing-pole days. Musta been about seventeen or eighteen when he hitched up with Martha Simmons. Pretty as a picture, she was. Had blonde hair, just like you."

"But if he would be seventy-five now, ain't he too old to have been my pa?" All that lead-in, just to figure out there was no way he could be related. It was disappointing and that was the only reason he sounded like a sullen little boy when he said it.

"Well, now, Jedediah had himself a mess of boys. A girl, too, but the rest was boys. Eli and Isaac and Matthew and John. Then Katherine came along, but after that it was Albert, James and Michael." Not, notably, a Beauregard in the bunch. "Now Eli and James, they didn't make it to adulthood. James was just a baby when he got sick, and Eli wasn't more than ten. But the rest of them growed up good and strong. And then the war came." Jesse paused there, meaty fingers rubbing at his eyes. Maybe this part of the past wasn't a whole lot of fun to look back at. "All of us ended up fighting, one way or another, even me and Jedediah. We started out together, but eventually one of us would wind up going with one company up to Virginia and another one would be off to Tennessee. In fact, weren't none of us here to fight in the battle at Chickamauga in sixty-three. Practically in our own back yard, but we was all spread out everywhere by then."

Another pause, another swipe of fingers across closed eyelids then just above, rubbing eyebrows like trying to ward off a headache. "And didn't too many of us make it back here, neither. Me and Matthew did, then John. Michael did, but he never was the same again. Lost half his leg and never got over it. Died in sixty-eight. Jedediah is buried somewhere up in Virginia, at least that's what they told Martha. And Albert survived, but he never came home, least as far as I know. I heard he wound up in Tennessee."

Well. That was quite a story. But Bo couldn't see how, exactly, it answered any questions he might have about his parentage.

"I reckon, if you was any of them boys' baby, it would probably be Isaac's, though. He settled in Alabama, down there in Cherokee County, I think. Not too far away, anyway. And he married him a nice girl named Emma or Emily or something…" Jesse sat up, finally, out of his slouch. Scratched his beard and thought a minute. "Emma, I think. Never much heard from him again. But rumor had it that Emma died in childbirth."

"Isaac?" Bo wrapped his mouth around the name, trying to think what I would mean to have a father named that. And a mother named Emma. "What," had to stop, had to lick his lips because his mouth was suddenly far too dry.

"War does funny things to a man." And he'd taken too long to move on to his next words, because Jesse's mouth was off and running again. "And losing family, that does more funny things. Maybe I ain't got to tell you that. You lost family younger'n anyone. And you's already seen how fighting makes men strange, how the ones you reckon you can count on most ain't always there to help you when you really need it." A frown, and a hand patting his shoulder. Maybe Rosco had found time to tell the old man the sequence of events that had led to his incarceration after all. "Well, them boys of Jedediah's, they should have stuck together. But they didn't and then they got to bickering amongst themselves. So I reckon it ain't that surprising that I don't know what happened after that with Isaac. But you might belong to him."

"What," Bo tried again, figured he really did need to squeeze his question in somewhere. "If I belonged to Isaac," and Emma, "what would my last name be?"

"Well, the same as mine. Ain't nobody still around here to remember that I had a family once, and a last name, too." More scratching at his beard and then Jesse leaned forward and looked him straight in the eye. "Jedediah was my cousin. And both of us had the same last name: Duke."


	18. Outlaw Man

**18. Outlaw Man**

The piano was out of tune and he hated it. Or hated the player and he wanted to go over to the corner and punch the guy or punch the piano, whichever way it worked out. But that was temper and he'd always had an abundance of that. His pa used to warn him of the dangers of giving in to his urges when they were fueled by anger. There was the obvious consequence – a whipping, and his father never did hold back when it came to that sort of thing – and then there were the others. Hazardous roads and slippery slopes, and here he was, all the things his pa hadn't wanted him to be.

It was easier to be all those things with a bottle of whiskey sitting in front of him, winking conspiratorially about all the fun they could get up to together.

"Duke." The girl was out of tune, too. Or maybe his ears were. The fifth of whiskey winked again at that notion. The piano warbled in agreement to the bottle's tacit suggestion that things would certainly sound much better should he empty it of its contents. So Luke took them both up on the suggestion, tipping the bottle up and swallowing deeply. "How come you didn't tell me you were coming tonight?"

Well, because he wasn't. Had no plans to be here whatsoever.

Dinner, Cap Porter had suggested. Just family, which sometimes included Luke amongst his real sons. A good meal, a chance for Cap to show his gratitude. Luke hadn't much wanted to attend, but he'd already turned down one such offer within recent memory. Sometimes, even if he didn't want to, he found it was wisest to acquiesce. To keep things peaceful, to not make waves.

So he'd gone, he'd eaten a fine cut of beef while his men camped out and scrapped for sow's belly and beans. He'd listened to Ephraim brag about a skirmish out on Morganville Road, a wild tale that sounded like he might have read it out of the Chattanooga Times and switched out the infamous Bill Dalton's name to replace it with his own. Seemed to involve stage coach robbery and it was just a fool telling tall tales that no one would bother to call him on.

Sitting there listening, with a shiny fork poised in his fingers and a white tablecloth spread in front of him—seemed stupid, but it was only time (and whatever money had been spent to create the fine meal that he was barely picking at) that was getting wasted, so he'd sat through it. Demurred when the wine was brought out, made excuses about wanting to go check on Emery Potter and said his goodbyes. Had walked out the front door with every intention of going by Doc Cooter's, then joining up with Yellow-eye and the rest at the campsite they'd selected in a grove of trees on Possum Hill. No plan other than to sit in front of the campfire and keep watch while the rest of them slept, but here he was, far from where he meant to be.

Because after he'd stepped down from Cap's porch, when the door had slapped closed behind and the voices faded back to the inner rooms, he'd looked up. Did it every time he left Cap's house, and only half the time did he get rewarded with a glimpse of Mary Kaye, up in her second story window. He'd wave, sometimes, though he knew she couldn't see him, then he'd turn around and whistle his way off the property.

She'd been up there tonight, curve of her belly silhouetted in the amber glow of the lantern, fingers twiddling in her hair as she had looked out at everything and nothing. Hard to know whether she was fascinated by the stars or the moon or anything at all. It was warm enough that her windows had been open, and he could have called to her. If he'd wanted to, but he didn't. Didn't want to think about her, wished his body hadn't automatically turned like it had a hundred times before, thought it was stupid that his eyes had glanced upward in some sort of reflexive habit, looking at what he didn't want to see. Mary Kaye had been a sweet girl once, just like he'd had a home once. Both things had gone the way of the feud, and he was a fool who couldn't let go of the past.

Which was why he was sitting here now, tending to a saloon table instead of a fire, taking the silent advice offered to him by a whiskey bottle. That seemed lonely, really, sitting there mostly empty without company, so Luke turned his head to catch Doc Appleby's eye, and gestured for another. A friend, to keep the poor bottle company.

"Duke," Ruby interrupted, but then she didn't know about his relationship with the whiskey bottle. How it had blossomed up out of nowhere into full-blown, possessive and deeply jealous love. "Are you all right?" And before he took time to even think about answering, Ruby had found herself a seat right next to him.

He smiled, at her or at the new fifth of whiskey that got set on the scarred surface of the table in front of him. A glass pointedly placed next to it with a solid clack (and that, of course, wasn't going to make the table any less dented) as a hint about how a gentleman took his whiskey. Luke nodded, figured it served as thanks to the old bartender who had brought him his drink, but Doc's chubby face maintained its stalwart frown. All but announcing out loud that he ought to have better manners or less to drink, or maybe fix those buttons at the top of his shirt that had come unfastened somewhere along the line. Then again, maybe the nonverbal scolding had more to do with how penniless boys shouldn't have bar tabs, but he did. And that was something to thank Cap Porter for, next time he saw him. Much obliged for paying for all my liquor, oh and by the way, keep your daughter away from Ernst Ledbetter; he's a scoundrel. (A bit late on that second part.)

He lined the new bottle up next to the old one. "Fine," he said, and the prostitute that was just about hanging off of his left arm might have assumed it was directed at her. It wasn't, but he didn't mind if she decided it was, so long as it kept her quiet.

He grabbed the first bottle, the one with only a gulp or two of liquor still in it, and tipped it up. Figured it was only fair. The whiskey had been a good friend to him for the whole hour it had been keeping him company. Seemed only reasonable to reunite the last droplets with the rest in his belly.

"Let's go upstairs," Ruby whispered in his ear as he set the empty bottle back down. On its side, because it was dead now and he figured it deserved to be at rest. Maybe he'd give it a proper burial, later. "Just you and me…"

He gave the standing bottle a good look. He hadn't made proper acquaintance with it yet, but it had that look about it. A smart bottle, above average intelligence and deep wisdom to boot. "Upstairs?" he parroted back, and though Ruby nodded her affirmative, the whiskey didn't seem to have a lot of interest in the notion. So Luke stayed put, no movement more than his arm reaching out, his fingers grabbing hold of his new smart and wise friend, unsealing the cap and bringing it to his mouth. See, now, he knew this one was special.

"Come on," Ruby said, pulling on his arm or his shirt and look there. He didn't move, but her efforts managed to tug yet another button open on his chest. Doc wouldn't be any too happy about that, but the whiskey bottle saw no problem with it, so Luke didn't bother to fix it. And eventually the girl to his left settled back down into her seat and contented herself with petting his shoulder. It was only a matter of time before her fingertips found exposed skin. The bottle winked while Ruby hummed some sort of approval of his current state of dress (or undress, whichever was more accurate at the moment).

Luke told the bottle about Mary Kaye, about her blue eyes and honey blonde hair, about her self-assured ways. With each sip he whispered down its neck about what it had been like to watch her stroll across the schoolyard with the other girls, and yet somehow always separate. Taller, more willowy, catching the sun and reflecting it back in the glow of her face and hair. Old Whiskey understood, could see the picture in his mind's eye and agreed it was lovely.

"Wouldn't it be nice," got whispered in his ear, and it tickled. Itched more like, and that made it real.

"Stop," he scolded Ruby, and everyone in the place would have agreed it was the right thing to do. He grabbed hold if her hand—tiny, skinny fingers, but those nails at the end could shred a man to ribbons, had to look out for those—and shoved it out of his shirt. Placed it in her own lap, where it belonged.

"Duke," she complained, but Whiskey seemed to concur it was a good choice in his part. Eliminated distractions, left him more concentration for tipping up the bottle and mumbling his sad story into its neck.

"That ain't no way to treat a woman," came from the next table over. No one Luke knew; some cowboy type that didn't even belong in these parts. No one of any consequence, and so Luke set to ignoring him, too. No one and nothing else mattered except Whiskey.

(_Tell me about the blue dress_, the bottle prompted.)

Boys all went to school in shades of brown, the color of dead grasses and mud. Which was convenient enough, because they could run all over Wildflower Hill at recess, and they'd never distract from the real scenery. The girls brought color to the schoolyard in their pinks and lavenders, sometimes reds. Mary Kaye wore blue. Not every day, but sometimes, and definitely on that first day Luke really noticed her. A lifetime of sitting across the aisle from the girl and she didn't mean anything at all to him until that one day, wearing a dress that matched her eyes.

Ruby kissed his cheek. Once, then twice, tiny fingertips on his chin with a gentle pressure, trying to turn his face toward hers. He took another sip, communing with Whiskey in a way that the prostitute just couldn't understand. Or wouldn't, Ruby was plenty purposeful in what she chose to pay attention to.

Blue dress, blue eyes, blue sky, and he'd understood it all, suddenly. Took him almost fifteen years on the planet to see how everything fit together, how girls became women and boys became men, and how life would be much, much better if he and Mary Kaye could do their becoming together.

More insistent pressure on his chin, warmth of breath that close, and a kiss at the corner of his mouth. He let Ruby turn his face, let her kiss him and kissed her right back. Heard a happy little noise in her throat, and then Whiskey was calling his name again.

(_Luke_, it said, _tell me about the trees_.)

So he planted his elbow against Ruby's ribcage and pushed her back. Which cleared the way for him to bring the bottle to his lips again.

The storm in the spring of ninety had taken down a pair of maples that separated one field on the Duke farm from another. If his pa had been in any sort of shape, the two of them would have sawed and chopped what was left of them into firewood, but he wasn't, so they didn't. Jud was trying to run wild and the farm was Luke's to tend so he had his hands full. Most days, but in the heat of summer, there wasn't a whole lot to do other than wait for the corn to grow tall and tassel out. Mary Kaye would come see him sometimes over that summer, when she could get away from home without one of her brothers tagging along. Luke would sit her up on one of those fallen trunks so they would be of equal height, and she'd tell him what he'd missed at school when he'd had to leave. He stole precisely two kisses from her there, could remember them both in exquisite detail.

"Ruby," and there was Miss Mabel, come to join in on interrupting Luke's intimate little moment with Whiskey. "Why don't you—"

"I'm fine right here," the stubborn girl insisted, and Luke didn't care what either of them said, as long as he had Whiskey in his hand.

(_The pond_, Whiskey whispered. _What happened there?_)

Now, see, that wasn't a nice question. Fickle friend this bottle was turning out to be. The pond was the next summer, after he'd cobbled together more than a year of keeping the farm working. A year and a half after his schoolyard days and Mary Kaye hadn't been around to see him in a long time. Jud had been chasing off after whatever trouble he could find and Luke was out looking for him one day when he heard voices at the pond. The sun reflecting off the water and the glare made it hard to see, but there was a splash followed by a laugh and a sputtering giggle. Luke had walked his way around the edge until the sun stopped blinding him, and there she was. Mary Kaye Porter, standing calf deep in the lake, her shoes left behind like afterthoughts on the bank. Her fingers were holding up her own skirt and petticoats, but she wasn't looking down to see where the water might dampen them. Her face was tilted up, a smile and then a kiss. For Champ Johnson, dripping wet and wearing no more than cotton pants, sucked tight to his skin with water, droplets running down his face from his hair. Mary Kaye let go of her skirt to snake a hand up around Champ's neck, mindlessly letting the hem fall into the water. Luke heard her giggles about that as he stole off into the trees, running for home at double speed, his chest burning like there were claws scraping his heart out from the inside.

After the shock wore off, he'd blamed himself. For quitting school, for not being where Mary Kaye obviously needed him to be. Champ was younger, with less responsibility and all the time in the world to dedicate to lazy afternoons of sun and water. And kissing.

It started up again, Ruby just about climbing into his lap, as hard as that was with a table right there in the way. Her wrist firmly on his cheek and her tongue resolutely in his—he pushed her back again. Into her own chair, and all her parts in her own possession again.

"Hey," the cowboy at the next table interjected again, and Luke told him to mind his own business with just his eyes. Wasn't sure how well it would work, what with the way he couldn't find the concentration to focus them properly, but the cowboy turned back to his own drink. Maybe it was Ruby's quiet assertion that she was just fine that did it.

"But let's get out of here, Duke," she whispered. "Up to my room and—"

(_The bed_, Whiskey said. _Go ahead, you've come this far_.)

He took a deep, deep swallow. Figured that if Whiskey really wanted to know, it'd have to be inside him. Close to his heart.

Everything was gone in one blackened mess. Even the grasses of what had been the Duke farmyard had been charred. There was nothing left of his pa or brother to be buried, but he'd put up markers on the hill next to his ma's grave all the same. Then he'd resolutely turned his back and walked off into his new life, one which really didn't have any room for Mary Kaye Porter. Not even in his head, which was too tightly wrapped around figuring out who it was that needed killing for what they'd done to the Dukes. Even after he'd been pulled into the Porter gang, he thoughts had never once (or, maybe once, but never for very long) strayed to Mary Kaye and to the boys she was rumored to be dating. (He couldn't help the rumors he overheard, but he didn't dwell, not much anyway.)

But the warmth had stolen in early during this past spring, the heat of full summer descending into the valley in the earliest days of March. Just another time he'd been called into Cap's presence, and he'd been on his way to the front door when the field hands came rushing in hollering something about Miss Mary Kaye. Before Cap or Luke could get the full story out of them, the next two, Hank and Mark he thought their names were, came trundling up, carrying an unconscious Mary Kaye between them. Luke had been the one sent to fetch Doc Cooter.

"Duke." It wasn't fair, really. The piano had evened out, but Ruby was still dissonant, jangling in his ears with her endless, pointless pleas.

"Leave me be," he growled, tolerating a stare from the men sitting nearby and a squint from Miss Mabel, who had retreated to the bar, but still had most of her attention focused in his direction. "I ain't got no interest in going upstairs." Or anywhere where Whiskey (or just regular whiskey – this particular bottle would run out eventually, too) wasn't.

Ruby pouted, but didn't leave his side. Which was acceptable to him, as long as she was quiet about it.

(_The bed_, Whiskey reminded him. _You can't quit now._)

Doc Cooter had been heavy against his back, clinging for his life against the dip and sway of riding double on a horse. Not that Doc had spent a lot of time riding single, either, so the whole thing was uncomfortable for him. Luke hadn't cared too much one way or the other, so long as the man held on well enough to get back to the Porter place. But now he could remember it as the last bit of warmth he'd felt; a doctor pressed thickly against his back.

They'd slid off Traveler, and Luke had guided the medical man up the steps, all but shoving him into the house and up the next staircase to where Mary Kaye was. He caught a quick glimpse of her, tucked into her bed with white sheets all around her, before the door closed behind Doc Cooter and his bag of diagnostic tools. She'd been beautiful there, glowing in her own pale sort of a way. Angelic, maybe, though he'd never really thought much about what angels looked like. She'd offered him a quick smile before the door had come between them.

"Where _do_ you want to go, then?" Ruby asked him.

"Nowhere with you." Nice, well, he couldn't be that. Even before the whiskey. But he'd tried to be at least kind. For a moment or two, but Ruby didn't understand kindness when it was offered in the form of an elbow to the ribs.

(_The bed…_)

The family got called into Mary Kaye's bedroom, conferences were held. Luke was on the wrong side of a closed door, but he knew that whatever had caused the girl to faint out in the meadows of her father's land, it was bad. The menfolk were getting loud in there.

Doc Cooter emerged, alone. "I've done all I can," he'd said darkly, leaving Luke's stomach to tighten in on itself. "Can you take me back to my place?"

"What is it?" he'd asked. Three times, then four. They were well off the Porter property before the answer came.

"She's with child," the doctor informed him gloomily. "Her kinfolk ain't too happy about it."

Neither was Luke. Funny thing, how it hit him. After everything, his ma's death, his pa's withdrawal. The fire, the loss of the last of his family and his home, and through it all, he had clung to hope. Secretly, so secretly that he'd even kept it from himself, he'd somehow figured that his life could still right itself, could come back into balance, if he could find himself with Mary Kaye at the end of it all. If he could start over.

"Ruby," he said, since he didn't want to talk to Whiskey anymore. He'd spilled enough of that story to a dispassionate glass container. "I ain't going nowhere with you. Not ever."

Because somewhere after learning about Mary Kaye's baby, he'd taken up with the prostitute. Oh, he'd been with her once or twice before that March day, but it had only been after giving up on his clandestinely-daydreamed life with the Porter girl that he'd taken to Ruby's bed in a consistent manner. And it wasn't doing any of them any good. Mary Kaye still stole through his mind at all the wrong moments, Ruby had her own fantasies about how Luke actually cared for her and Miss Mabel, though she was marching decisively in his direction, probably intent on taking him to task for the way he was shoving Ruby away from him now, had been a victim of it all, too. Her home on Monroe Street had been destroyed in exactly the same way that his on Gray Voice Lane had.

"Get lost," he said—to Ruby, to his past, to his dreams for any kind of a future. To Whiskey, to Mabel, to awareness as the blackness around the edges of his eyes got too hard to fight back anymore.


	19. Ol' 55

**19. Ol' 55**

Funny thing about luck, how it could turn so quickly. Or be both ends of the spectrum at once. Good luck to find him before the streets got crowded with people going about whatever business they had, bad luck that he had blood on his face, drying into the short hairs of his chin, crusting on the collar of his shirt.

"Luke." Good luck that his eyes opened when he heard his name, because there was no way Yellow-eye could imagine lifting him off the hardpan dirt of the alley and getting him to the doctor. Not without a lot of help.

"Go 'way." Bad luck that he was such a stubborn fool.

Squatting down next to him was risky, running a hand over his cheek was downright dangerous. He was like any wild animal, more of a threat because he was injured.

"Leave me be," Luke groused, but he stayed right where he was, making no effort to get up or move away.

He smelled, though. Lord, he downright stunk. "You're hurt," Yellow-eye informed him, though it hardly seemed necessary. There was blood smeared on his sleeve, too, and his shirt was torn.

Good luck that he didn't seem to have any bullet wounds in him. He breathed normally, and his eyes, when he opened them, appeared to be their normal piercing blue and fully alert.

"Let me get a better look," Yellow-eye pleaded in a low voice.

Bad luck that when he rolled away from the hand that was trying to help him, Luke belched. Unpleasant odor, and there, still clutched in the right hand that he'd kept tucked under his body until now, was a bottle. Mostly empty, some of what had once been in it was soaked into the front of what was left of his filthy mess of a shirt. Good luck that he didn't seem to be injured anywhere other than his face, bad luck that—

"You're drunk," Yellow-eye stated the obvious.

"You're a girl," Luke accused back. Funny look on his face, it wasn't a smile or a grimace, maybe something in between. Infused with just a touch of pride in his own cleverness. "Some day," he paused there, different face now. One that made an effort toward angry but never quite made it there. Stopped somewhere around pure honesty, straightforwardness. Earnest, because she'd snatched his bottle away and he wasn't quite done with that. But Luke was no fool, even drunk and rolling in the dirt. He knew when he'd been outmatched. "Sooner than I reckon I want, I'm going to be sober." Painfully so, most likely. "And you're still going to be a girl. What are you going to do about that?"

Not a single thing, not here in the alley between the saloon and the milliner's shop, where ladies would soon show up to shop for finery.

"Can you get up?" she asked. Had to get him out of here, had to get him to the doctor. She didn't know what it meant that there was so much blood under his nose and on his chin, but she didn't figure it could be a good sign. Besides, that purple ribbon of sky just above the peak of Lookout Mountain was starting to trend a little too much toward pink for her liking. Bad luck that morning was breaking just exactly like it did every single day.

"Daisy," he said, and that, of all things, was the end of her rope. Luke could drink himself into a stupor (but he never had before), he could get himself beaten bloody (not by a Hickory, or he'd've been shot through and not be calling her anything at all), he could be sarcastic and obnoxious (he'd always been both of those things, just there used to be a wry smile that softened his words), but he could not call her by that name. Not when he was stinking drunk, wallowing in filth and self-pity, not when he was still reaching for the bottle she'd taken away from him. She threw it toward the foundation of the saloon, heard the glass tinkle as it broke, saw how Luke flinched at the sound. Figured she ought to care, maybe find some sympathetic place in her soul, but she just couldn't.

She found her feet instead, planted her hands on her hips. "Luke Duke," she said and she sounded like someone's wife. "You just get yourself together and get up out of that dirt, right now."

It was enough, she felt, that it was getting hard to remember that she was supposed to be a man. That she'd let her voice go high in the wrong moments, that she'd turned her head any time someone mentioned the prostitute in the brothel who'd taken to using the name Daisy. That her brain had itself all twisted around whether to think of herself as he or she, that the mental image of Enos Strate could tie her stomach into square knots and clove hitches. She'd reached the end of her rope, or one of her ropes, anyway. Hard to say which, they had all gotten strained to their limit, fraying and threatening to break.

"Just go," Luke advised her, and if she was smart or lucky, she'd listen. "Leave me be."

"I ain't gonna do any such thing," she announced, bending over at the waist in a way that a woman in a corset never would, and grabbing his earlobe between her fingers. "And you are gonna get up onto your feet, right now." She started tugging.

"Ow, ow, ow, Daisy, stop it!" came the complaining response, sounding every bit like the boy Luke had once been. But it worked. Luke's hands were pressing into the ground, pushing him up to all fours, then his knees. She didn't let go until he was on his feet, mumbling curses under his breath and glowering at her from beneath lowered eyebrows. Good luck that she knew a few tricks about his threshold for pain.

"Don't," she scolded before he could even start up with her. "You make me turn you over my knee. And don't call me Daisy no more, neither. You got to see the doc, and don't you give me no fuss about that, neither."

Three, it seemed, was one too many things to ask of him. He balked when she tugged at his hand. And even drunk and hurt, he was still immovable as a stone if he wanted to be. Bad luck that he was more muscle than brain.

"Ain't no reason to go to see Doc," he insisted with all the petulance of a child that was afraid of being stuck by a needle. "Ain't nothing he can do for me that a little sleep," in the dirt and grime of an alley, if Luke got his way, "won't cure."

"Luke Duke," she hissed, still tugging on his hand. "You are about as helpful as a bump on a frog. I reckon you're going to have a nasty hangover, and if that was all that was wrong with you, I'd leave you to your misery. In fact, I'd stand right over you and bang pots together if I figured it would make you more miserable." Funny, she could hear her mother in her own words. Couldn't swear she had ever sounded that way before. And maybe, even if she didn't want to be precisely the same as her mother, there was something to being a woman that was more powerful than she had previously considered. Just look at Luke, halfway cowering under the weight of her tone alone. "But you're hurt, and I don't figure I've got the medical skills to fix you."

And look at that, Luke was discovering, as if for the first time, that he had blood on his shirt. Couldn't see that it was all over his face, too.

"It can't be too bad," he assessed.

"And I ain't taking the word of a drunken fool on that, neither, so come on." She tugged on his hand again, met with exactly the same amount of resistance that she had a moment earlier. "Luke," she complained.

"I don't want to go to Doc," he said and it wasn't petulant or obnoxious, not fighting her for the sake of his manhood or his pride. It was Luke really not wanting to go see the doctor. And maybe she could understand that. Emery Potter was still there, laid up with bandages around his knee. He'd lived, like Doc Cooter promised, but he might never walk right again. Enough people came out of Doc's with some piece of them missing, or in a coffin. She could see where going to the doctor was almost like consigning yourself to grave injury or death. Luke wasn't that bad off, and wasn't ready to imagine himself as that bad off either.

"All right," she sighed. "Come on." She grabbed his hand all the tighter and tugged. West instead of east, and he followed along. Down Front Street and over to Monroe, and Luke never put up any kind of resistance at all, other than a few inebriated stumbles. Bad luck that he was such a clumsy drunk.

The world, she figured, really had been stood on its ear when a drunk man would rather be led straight to the pastor of the town instead of the doctor.

"Well hello," old Jesse said in a sad voice when he answered her banging on the doors. Good luck that he was already awake, and stood ready to welcome a filthy, stinking drunk man into his sanctuary. "Come on in."


	20. Already Gone

**20. Already Gone**

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Jesse chastised. Only worked but so well. Luke was past caring about shame, past rational discussion. Ready to sleep if only the rough cloth would stop its merciless fussing at his chin. "Your pa would—"

But no. How many times had he said those same words about what Luke's pa wouldn't have wanted for him? More than either of them could count. This close to the boy's face, hand on his neck and thumb tipping his chin up so he could get at the abrasion underneath to scrub it clean and he could feel all the tension in his jaw as Luke's teeth ground against each other.

Luke's pa. Was a good man, but nowhere near perfect. Hard to know what Luke felt about him when about all the boy could bring himself to say was that he wasn't here anymore. (And why did he keep saying that? Because Jesse kept nagging after him about what his pa wouldn't have wanted.) Maybe the boy could forget, now that the man was gone, how he'd withdrawn after Lureen's death. Left Luke to manage the farm and his brother and the still when the youngster hadn't yet had shoulders broad enough to carry all those burdens. And what had Matthew Duke been doing while his son was trying, with everything he had, to keep home and family together? Drowning his sorrows in whiskey.

Then again, just maybe Luke had done a little more paying attention to his pa's ways and wants than was entirely good for him, when his foul breath and impaired state were taken into account.

"You're lucky," he changed his tack. Still scolding, because he didn't know any other way to handle the boy. He wasn't Luke's pa, hadn't ever raised any children, but he could remember his own childhood well enough. When he got out of line, he got whipped. After, that was, he got lectured. "You would still be out there languishing now, rolling around in the dirt and waiting for some other boy to come along and shoot you, if your scout hadn't cared enough to come looking for you before there was even light in the sky. Looked like old Yellow-eye wanted to take you out back and beat you himself for your foolishness."

"She'd never hurt me," Luke mumbled back. The boy was way past drunk and near ready to pass out. Slurring his words and turning a boy into a girl. "She loves me."

He ought to have learned long ago to stop expecting drunk men to make sense.

Luke's nose was a mess, probably broken. Not much to be done about that, other than to put a cool cloth over it and let the boy rest. After, that was, Jesse got done cleaning out the abrasion on his chin. (Silly fool must have hit the packed dirt of the road face first at some point in the night.) And, of course, his handiwork would get scrutinized by Cletus or Doc Cooter himself, whichever one of the medical men that Yellow-eye succeeded in fetching back here.

"You always was the stubborn one." He figured he still had a few minutes to try to reach the boy. "And you never did like being told you couldn't do a thing that you'd set your mind on doing. Even if it was the biggest dang mistake in the world, you'd just keep right on moving toward it." He picked up Luke's right hand in his left, then dropped the rag he'd been using to scrub the grit from his chin back into the dish of sudsy water by his knee. Used one hand to hold on while the other pulled Luke's fingers out of the fist they'd been clenched into in anger or pain. "That right there," he pointed to a scar at the base of Luke's thumb. "Do you remember how you got that?" Blue eyes glaring at him, silently informing him that Luke was not about to actively participate in this little lesson. Which, Jesse had to admit, was a fine choice on the boy's part, what with how his words would go uninterrupted. "Well, I do. You was old enough to know better. But that shiny, copper pot in your pa's still, well, you was just enamored of it. He told you not to touch it, but you just waited until his back was turned then trotted right up and did what you wanted to anyway. Screamed loud enough to scare up ghosts. Then you whimpered for a while when we put your hand into the creek to soothe it, and promised you'd listen to grown-ups from then on, but you never did."

"I don't remember you being there," the boy grumbled accusingly. Kept up the glaring as best he could with the way his eyes drooped with the urge to sleep. "I don't remember it happening that way at all."

Jesse sighed and picked up the cloth again. Gestured for Luke to tip his chin up, and when the boy didn't comply grabbed hold of the back of that dust-caked, sweaty neck with a firm hand. Didn't seem worthwhile to argue with a stubborn fool over his stubborn foolishness.

"You remember climbing up over the hill and into the gorge, don't you?" The stone cliffs would glow pink in the afternoon light, where the trees and overhang kept the air cool and fresh. Steep and treacherous in spots, but Jesse's legs had been more steady and sure back then. And Luke hadn't weighed more than a sack of potatoes in those days, so it was easy to sling him up onto his shoulders, where he'd giggle when Jesse walked under low boughs. Matthew would cast him a sideways look for trying to decapitate his son, but both Jesse and Luke knew that no such thing could ever happen. Jesse was careful and Luke had an innate sense of his body and how to balance himself while ducking low, sticky fingers clinging tight to Jesse's forehead. "Up to Sitton's Gulch Creek to turn stones and catch crawdads."

A better man would have just let the memories sink in, wouldn't have let it get under his skin that he was being stalwartly ignored. And Jesse really would have figured he was that better man, but Luke Duke seemed to be able to bring out the cross nature that had always been bubbling just below his surface. So instead of being, calm, soothing, understanding, Jesse scrubbed harder at the exposed flesh of the boy's chin.

"Ow." Pink and raw, little droplets of blood coming back to the surface. Would've been easier to get a mule to admit to feeling pain. Or anything at all, but Luke had inherited the Duke obstinacy right alongside those curls in his hair.

"You liked chasing crawdads, boy. Splashing in the creek and as clever as you was, you never did figure out that it was just an excuse to let you get cooled off on hot summer days." And to get him out into the wilderness, because he was such an active child, always under his mother's feet in those years when she was trying to tend his toddling younger brother. Jud was a handful, but he didn't have half the inventiveness that Luke did. Only made sense for the adults to divide and conquer when it came to those two boys. "You ate them pretty good, too, as I recall. If you go out and catch me some," because Jesse couldn't see himself climbing over that ridge again in this lifetime, leastwise, not without the help of a mule. "Then I'll cook them up for you, just like you like."

"Ain't got time for no crawdad fishing," Luke hissed out from between his teeth. "And you know it."

"Boy," he was caught between patience and wanting to put the fool over his knee. Better man and all that, not to mention the boy was younger than he pretended, naïve and not at the same time. He'd lost everything except his life and here he was, willing to hand that over, too. But not, of course, before getting sloppy drunk and tangled up in pointless saloon fights, first. "You got time to do whatever you want to do. It's the only thing you got, is time."

Muscle working in Luke's jaw as he swallowed down any more words that he might have on the subject.

"Hold this," Jesse said, grabbing Luke's farm-strong hand, still calloused from a lifetime of hard labor, and showing him how to place the rag on his own chin. "Hold it firm," he insisted, when Luke's effort was half-hearted. "You best mind me, boy. I ain't too old to take a switch to you." Another swallow, and Luke had no comment on Jesse's offer to discipline him, either. As long as he held the cloth tight against the wound that still wanted to bleed, the pastor was willing to let the boy stay silent. "You always was an ornery and obstinate child," he mumbled as he crossed to sanctuary, over to the closet on the far side, where there were leftover bandages from the last time Luke and his men had taken refuge here. "You ain't changed none."

Chins, he decided after he'd been working at it for a few minutes, were ridiculously difficult to bandage. Luke was going to look as though he'd had some teeth pulled, was going to have a pair of black eyes and a crooked nose. Most of it would heal on its own, so long as the boy didn't go getting himself thrown to the ground again any time real soon.

"You used to like to go up to the falls, too. Quit that," he interrupted his own story-telling to say, smacking Luke's hands away from where the fool was trying to stop this bandaging process. "Boy, it don't matter what this ends up looking like, you're going to spend the day here sleeping off what you done drunk up. Ain't nobody going to see you but me." A snort through Luke's nose and he gave up the struggle. "You remember the falls, don't you boy? How you liked to look up at them and you wanted to get right underneath them, but you couldn't swim a lick and the water was deep there." And cold, icy cold, enough to make a man think he could freeze to death in the middle of summer. Sandy bottom with big stones that must've fallen from the cliff overhead, like men jumping to their death. "I used to put you on my shoulders and wade out a ways so's you could get a better look at them. 'Get under them, Unca' Jesse,' you used to say, but you never was one—"

"Yeah, well," the boy growled out, his arms folding over his chest and his face turning resolutely away from Jesse's, loose end of the bandage flopping in its own defiance at how it hadn't gotten tied down quickly enough. "Them stories is all very nice, but I'm waiting for you to get to the part where you went off into the woods to live and didn't come around no more. Or the part where you and my daddy stopped talking to each other. Maybe you want to tell me why you ain't never set foot on our property again until the night of the fire?"

"Boy." It was always easier when he could get his ire up, when he could let his past and his present all meet in the middle to put fire and brimstone into his spine and his mouth, when he could threaten to take the switch to drunken fools. When Luke would slur his words so badly that the gender of his scout got inadvertently changed in the process, when his eyes, blackened as the skin around them was, were nearly closed with the fatigue that came from trying to hold his liquor. Everything got a lot harder when Luke did a convincing job of being sober, and furthermore, just plain right. "I reckon I knew when I couldn't be the best influence. I reckon your pa knew, too. I wasn't always tame in those days, you know. Maybe I hadn't never been. But in in them years so soon after the war, I suppose I didn't have no interest in being tamed, neither. Or in being part of anything that was bigger than me and my own still. We lost so much in the war."

"War changes people," Luke said and it was much too agreeable. Much too supportive of whatever justifications the war gave him for his behavior. "That's what my pa used to say. Losing things, changes people, too." So rational, coming off as so wise beyond his years, sounding just like Jesse had back in those days. "We lost the war. We lost the mills and the mines and our jobs and our way of life. My pa done told me all of that, too. 'But,' he'd always say, 'we got each other.'"

"Luke," he tried to interrupt, because he knew where this was going, could hear the aching tone to the boy's voice and see the way his eyes glistened a little too much.

"So you lost the war and you figure you had the right to disappear off into the woods and act halfway crazy. I can understand that. I don't take it too hard that you done disappeared, because it was what set right with you. What I don't understand," and Luke swatted away his hand when Jesse tried to touch him. Anywhere, even if it was just on the excuse of tying the bandage that was still loose at his chin. "Is why you think you got the right to stand up in that pulpit every Sunday and say how everyone could be better people. Or why you would bother. There ain't nothing left to save of this town—"

"Now you listen to me, boy," Jesse hissed, his hands grabbing firmly to Luke's upper arms, holding steady against the boy's efforts to shake him off. Still too inebriated or maybe he just lacked the conviction to get free, but Luke didn't get out of his grip this time. "You can have any kind of a life you want to, starting from here forward. You can't change what has already happened, but you can choose a better path, one that gives you a family of your own and a good life, if you want it. Now I know you ain't never going to forget what happened to the family you had, any more than I'm going to forget the war. But there ain't nobody hurting you now boy, ain't nobody doing you no harm." Had to let go of the youngster then, had to calm down because in a second he was going to start shaking him like an unruly child and he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop. "Except you."

Silence while Luke glowered off at nothing in the distance and Jesse waited for the mule to give in the slightest. "There ain't nothing left for me," he finally ground out from between his molars. "I got nothing."

Jesse sighed, trying to let all the tension out of himself. To be rational, calm, not angry. Didn't work. "It's up to you, Luke," he said finally. "You got the choice. You want to hold onto everything that makes you miserable, you can do it. Or you could look around you and see that the trees still flower in spring, the grass gets green and the birds keep right on singing. Every year, everything comes back to life after winter tries it's dangedest to kill it all."

"I ain't a tree."

"No, you ain't. You got legs, you got arms. You can work, and you can think, Luke." Of course, that was a mixed blessing right there. The boy could outthink men twice his age, but most of his thoughts were awfully dark around the edges. "You can choose. You just look at that Babe Sheridan. He ain't never had nothing to begin with. But he still wakes up each day and figures that the world is a good place and that there's something worthwhile waiting for him right around the corner."

Luke snorted, but he was calming down. His body remembering that it had been abused, maybe, his eyes getting tired of glowering and reconsidering the value of sleep. "He's a dolt. He ain't even smart enough to," a yawn interrupted the thought. "Wear a hat at night. All that blonde hair glowing in the dark, practically begging someone to shoot him."

"You're both dolts," Jesse agreed. "And ain't neither of you got the smarts to properly protect yourselves. Difference is, he expects to live through each night. You—I ain't so sure about you."

Another yawn, eyes closing. Jesse helped him to lie down on the pew where he'd been sitting. Awfully hard, but the youngster didn't seem to notice that, any more than he noticed the sound of the sanctuary doors opening to admit his scout and the doctor's assistant. Jesse put a finger to his lips to shush them as the boy closed his eyes.

"I'm fine. You ain't got to worry about me." The sentence ended in mumbles. Nonsense, probably, but Jesse figured he could be forgiven for wanting to believe that those last words were _Unca' Jessse._


	21. Certain Kind of Fool

**21. Certain Kind of Fool**

Sobriety had never been asked nor expected of him, and it wasn't now, either. His lineage had ensured that liquor would always be a part of his life. Even Jesse, who had scolded him just about every way possible, hadn't asked him to stay away from alcohol so he wasn't. He just wasn't drinking any, either.

He'd always known that Jesse wasn't really his uncle. His pa had made it plenty clear, back in those crawfishing, tadpole hunting days, that Jesse wasn't anyone to be relied on. A distant relative, just like Atlanta was a distant city. The kind of thing you were lucky to see now and again, but nothing you should grow to love. Not when it could be gone in a heartbeat. Not when there were mountains and rivers and all manner of uncrossable things between you.

Still, uncle had been what he'd called him, if only out of respect. Because he was older, supposedly wiser, but that was the other thing his pa had told him. Eventually, when it had been months and he was whining about why the nice man with white hair never came around to take him off on treks into the woods anymore. Jesse, his pa explained (and it might have been right there that the notion of calling him 'uncle' had died), was a fool. Hadn't always been, wouldn't necessarily always be, but right at that moment he was off doing foolish things. He'd asked what that meant and got told, in a tone that tolerated no follow up questions, to go out to the barn and collect the eggs. Years later, after the tone of his pa's voice had stopped being scary enough to cow him, he hadn't needed to ask the question anymore. By then Luke mostly referred to him as _crazy old Jesse_ anyway, just like the rest of the town did. Because he was mostly that, mostly living in brambles and spewing the sort of words that could only sound wise to his own ears. Drunk on 'shine half the time, and it took him a few years to work his way back. When Luke's pa had gone through his own love affair with liquor, Luke'd had no choice but to seek out Jesse's help and it must've been a good thing for the old man. Being needed, being useful, because from there the oldster just kept right on cleaning up until he'd washed away all the filth from his past and become the town's pastor.

So now Jesse didn't touch liquor, either to drink or to brew. Which was a shame, because what Dukes made was a cut above the rest, but Luke figured the line would die with him. Daisy's pa never had wanted anything to do with the moonshine business; it was the wedge that had worked its way ever deeper between her family and his.

And the liquor he'd had two nights ago seemed to have worked its way between him and Daisy, too. Yellow-eye was as faithful as ever, staying by his side when they were at work, but when he declared them off-duty, there was no small body at his side, keeping him company or trying to touch him with a gentle hand.

So he sat alone. In the corner of the saloon nursing a glass of warm, metallic-tasting water. Far from everyone, particularly Mabel, who looked like she might just dig her nails into his flesh and tear at him if he got too close. Ruby was at the other end of the bar as well, making a show of flitting between a couple of Hickory boys. Sashaying lightly and laughing broadly and otherwise making it perfectly clear that she was plenty happy where she was and didn't want to be anywhere else. And he figured that was all for the best, really.

It seemed, however, as those who took their midday meal at the saloon began to filter in, that he'd cornered himself. Got himself far enough away from all the noise and bustle, but then sitting right down next to him and leaving him nowhere to escape, there was the marshal. Giggling at his good fortune, maybe, to find himself a surprise companion and captive audience for whatever brilliant notion he had running laps around in that feeble mind of his.

"Well, if it ain't the Duke boy," he crowed, just as cheerful as a bear with a bead on some honey.

"It ain't," Luke mumbled, just for the sake of being contrary. Because he had more problems than solutions, because he'd spent more than two years trying to figure out who had killed his family, and all he had to show for it was a broken nose and two black eyes. Well that and a scout that was all business and a pastor that figured he was within his rights to talk about the past as if those days weren't completely gone with nothing to show for themselves but heartache.

"Huh?" the marshal cocked his head to the side, trying to figure that one out. Luke just waved his hand in the air and said howdy like any good boy who had been taught his manners ought to. Doc Appleby showed up then to dispel the last of the awkwardness, let Rosco order his usual (which was the same as what Luke was having except he'd want ice in it, and how he thought he was fooling anyone into believing he drank anything stronger than water, Luke didn't know) and shuffled off to get it. "Duke," the marshal whispered conspiratorially. "I got a favor to ask you."

It was worthy of a sigh and nothing more. Rosco wasn't half as clever as he thought he was, always after him to give up the goods on any illegal Hickory activity. "I don't know nothing, Marshal," he answered with that same bored tone he used to take back in his school days.

"Gyu," the man answered back, his lips pursed as he tried to work that one out. How Luke could know nothing or how he could—"Ijit!" was the follow up response. "No, not that kind of favor."

"I ain't joining your posse, neither."

"Wijit," seemed like a variation on his other utterances, but then it changed, became clearer. "Would you just hush up, boy, and listen to me. I don't need you in my posse, I got plenty of fools that want to be part of my posse." Sounded pretty much like the usual ramblings of a lawman who had limited control over his tongue. Luke could have reminded him that it hadn't been much more than a week since Rosco had caught him on the other side of this same room and just about pleaded with him to leave the feud and join on the side of the law. And, as far as Luke knew, there wasn't anybody that was exactly begging the man for a chance to join his posse. But for a man who enforced laws, Rosco's relationship with the truth seemed just about as slippery as a greased pig.

"Of course, you got fools that want to join your posse," Luke answered back anyway. "Ain't nobody but a fool would want anything at all to do with your posse."

"You got a foul mouth on you, boy. I figure if your pa was here, he'd whip your hide for sassing the law like this." Maybe so. But he was about dang tired of reminding everyone that his pa wasn't ever going to whip him again. "Now I heard about your little fight with them out-of-town boys and I'm sorry I wasn't here to stop it before you got the stuffing knocked out of you. Even if you are a surly cuss most days, I don't take kindly to strangers beating on Dade boys. So I reckon you got a right to be surly, considering all them bruises you got on your face. But I also figure that you ain't so far gone into this feud that you ain't willing to listen to me for a minute."

"Go on, Rosco," he said with a certain amount of guilt. Half of the time he meant no harm with the things he said; he just had a sharp tongue and the wits to use it. The other half the time he was a miserable jackass and he figured he had earned the right to be. But teasing the marshal, whether good-naturedly or bad, just wasn't fair. Not when the man was so dang earnest.

"Governor Northen's daughter is getting married." Well, yeah, that wasn't precisely news. It'd been officially mentioned in the Gazette a few months back, but Miss Mabel's girls had been buzzing about it for longer than that. Speculating on what the bride's dress would look like and how tall the groom was. Whether the dinner would be veal or pork, and just how much fine wine would be flowing. "Up at the big falls."

"Now wait a minute." That part was news, big news and the sort of thing that he would've figured couldn't happen. "The governor of Georgia is going to come all the way out here to get his daughter married off?" Sure, they weren't technically all that far from Atlanta. Maybe a hundred miles as the crow flew, but horses didn't have wings. They had hoofs and needed roads, especially if they were bringing in wagonloads of wedding finery, not to mention the guests. And the only roads that went from here to Atlanta required a detour into Tennessee just to get around the mountains. Luke didn't figure any governor of Georgia had ever bothered to come here before.

"Them falls is famous, boy. For being beautiful and maybe even romantic. And if you're the governor's only daughter," Polly, he seemed to recall her name being, "then I reckon you can ask to be married anyplace you want. And the governor, he done sent me a letter saying she wants to be married here."

Well, that was all very interesting, and he figured the prostitutes would get to jockeying for some way to get involved in the proceedings. "Well, tell the governor congratulations for me, then," were Luke's parting words as he got up from the bar. There had been a reason he'd chosen this corner, and it wasn't to be safe from Mabel or to get a vantage point on the Hickory boys at the other end of the place, and it sure wasn't so that he could be accosted by old Rosco and told tales of romance, love and marriage.

"Boy," the marshal said, grabbing onto his arm. Thought twice about it a second too late, let him go after he'd already balled one of his hands into a fist and begun to cock it back.

Luke took a deep, steadying breath, loosened his fingers one by one, shook his head. "Sorry marshal," he said. "I didn't—it wasn't—"

"You boys," Rosco said, and his hair looked grayer, his face more deeply wrinkled, his eyes more tired than they ever had before. "Are so ready to fight you ain't got the smarts to tell the difference between a kind hand and a harsh one. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." Any other time that sentence would have ended with a lecture about how you didn't sass the duly constituted law, and then there would have been nonsense syllables. This time the marshal just looked at him, something sad in his eyes, something lost. Maybe worried, maybe just regular old disappointed. "Sit down, Luke," was spoken about as plain as anything ever had been. No bluff or bluster, no cajoling, no admiration for the skills he had, no offers of refuge from the storm.

"Yes, sir," he mumbled, some dormant sense of propriety and manners emerging from within him. Or maybe it was more like shame. Either way, he sat like a good boy and raised his eyebrows. Waited.

"It would be an awful shame if the governor's stay here wasn't pretty as a picture. I would hate for him to wake up to gunshots."

"I don't reckon that would happen, Rosco. Ain't nobody around here in the habit of shooting at dawn."

"Duke," Rosco was getting frustrated with him again. "I don't figure it would be a good thing if the Governor saw this corner of the state as lawless and feud-torn."

Luke barked out a hard little laugh. "Of course not. Not with good old Marshal Coltrane in charge. You going to arrest the whole town, Rosco? That's about your best bet." That or he could convince the governor to stay in Morganville. Not that there was anything in Morganville worth staying for, but at least the feud had never traveled that far.

"No, I ain't gonna arrest the whole town," Rosco burst out. The heads of those men near enough to hear and sober enough to care turned in their direction. Luke smirked at Rosco's flustered attempts to hush himself. "I ain't gonna arrest the whole town," he repeated in a hissing whisper. "Not if you do me a favor."

Well, this was interesting. The big, tough marshal was in need of a favor from an outlaw feuder. Luke took a sip of his water, looked at Rosco over the lip of his glass, raised his eyebrows again. Put the glass down and waited, because whatever came next was bound to be fascinating.

"All I'm asking for is a—" pause there while Rosco pulled a piece of paper out of his breast pocket, stared at it for a few seconds, turned it upside down and started reading in earnest. "Five day truce. From July the twenty-fifth to the thirtieth."

"Well, see now, there's your trouble right there," Luke informed him. "Dates and things, why, we riff-raff in the feud, we don't know nothing about dates." Give or take the fact that just about every boy involved in the feud had as much schooling under their belt as anyone else in this town. They could count and they knew their months just fine, and any one of them could tell Rosco the day of the week, if he asked them. But all the folks with respectable jobs—be they marshal or pastor or bartender or even madam of the brothel—didn't think twice about calling the boys involved in the feud fools. It would be a shame to disabuse them of that notion now.

"Gij," Rosco answered him back, all the frustration in the world caught in his pinched, pink face. "I'll tell you what day it is. Today is July—" fingers out, the lawman started counting. Ran through the ones on his right hand and was well nigh through the ones on his left when Luke spoke up.

"Twenty-second." Because when the fingers ran out there were only toes left, and Luke wasn't quite ready to smell whatever lived in those boots of Rosco's, sharing space with his feet. Besides, unless the marshal had two extra toes (and he might, Luke wouldn't put it past him), he was going to run out before he got to the end anyway.

"Twenty-second," echoed back at him through clenched teeth, followed by a tight, mostly-constricted, "ij, oo." This right here was Marshal Coltrane getting annoyed, and everyone ought to be quaking in fear. "You're just lucky," he muttered out, jaw still tight. "That I figure I need you, boy. Otherwise I'd be locking you up in jail for being a public menace." And a public embarrassment. The little fit that the lawman was making a show of not throwing was getting the attention of more and more folks.

"Come on," Luke suggested, getting up off his stool and leaving his drink behind. Rosco hesitated a little bit over leaving his. "You can always get more," Luke informed him, "it's only—"

"Ijit!" Rosco said resolutely, to keep words from being blurted out about his drink of choice. Not, of course, that there was a single man in the saloon that had any questions about what was in the marshal's glass. It worked anyway, Rosco found his feet and followed Luke out the door. Onto the porch and over to where Traveler was hitched. Luke figured that whenever the marshal got done asking his favor, he might take the horse over to Gray Voice Lane and the two of them could leisurely wander through the fields of Luke's old farmland. Since the horse might be the only one who really did want him around these days.

"So what is it you want from me, Rosco?"

"Duke, you got the respect of every man on both sides of this thing." Well, that just went to prove that the duly constituted law of this county knew absolutely nothing about his constituents. "Don't you go making them faces at me; they do. You go to them Hickory boys, and you ask them for a five-day truce, no fighting in town or out of town or anywhere at all during them five days, and they're going to take it serious. If I ask 'em they'll just laugh and fight twice as much." Well, Luke had to admit that the last sentence was true anyway. What good was a feud if it didn't drive the local lawman crazy?

"Rosco," Luke said, putting his foot in the stirrup and grabbing the horn on Traveler's saddle. "I ain't saying I'll do it." He mounted, then steadied his horse under him for just a few seconds. "But if I do, I ain't making you any promises that it'll work." Then he nudged Traveler just enough to get him trotting. Somewhere behind him he heard ijits, wijits, and sandwiched in there somewhere, there might have been some sort of thanks.


	22. Victim of Love

**_Author's note:_ **_ For those of you missing Bo, he's back. And none too soon, since he's the good-humored one...**  
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_Just a reminder that this story had to be stripped of its lyric epigraphs to be posted here. It is posted in its entirety on AO3. There's a link at the bottom of my profile page to get you there._

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><p><strong>22. Victim of Love<strong>

Days had passed. Seven of them, to be technical. But Bo didn't really want to be technical. Wasn't sure, as the light slanted in through the latticework of steel around him, that he wanted to be anything at all. His eyes stayed firmly closed against the notion of morning, his face pressed sweatily into the hard mat that covered the cot's frame. Feet hanging off the end, halfway numb, because jailhouse beds were short.

Footsteps. Solid, making an attempt at swaggering and this was the part where he was supposed to prove that he was awake. But sleep was so much better, full of dreams as it was. Good dreams or bad, didn't matter. Because when things happened in his dreams, he knew what he wanted to do about them, whether it was to embrace them or run in the opposite direction. Once his eyes were open and the day intruded, well, things got a mite more complicated. He mashed his face into the mat even harder. Smelled of straw and old sweat. Nothing he'd liked in those first days here, but by now he'd gotten used to it.

Clank and thump; the marshal was moving around outside the bars, getting the morning started. Keys jingling on his belt, metal bang, the sound of one bucket then another getting set on the floor. More footsteps, a click and a clink, and Bo cracked his eyes open just enough to see boots on the floor next to the cot. Dusty and badly scuffed, just about worn through at the left big toe. Hard to pretend at sleeping with his eyes half open and every muscle tensed in expectation of getting doused by cold water. Which, and Bo couldn't have explained this if anyone ever asked him why, he mostly wanted to happen.

What he got hit with didn't so much splash as thud softly onto his back. "Get up boy," Rosco greeted.

Bo muttered all his rotten thoughts about the marshal and the ancestors that were responsible for his presence in the world, or maybe just right here in the cell with him. Kept his face right where it was with no plans whatsoever of lifting it.

"This is a jail, not a hotel," he got informed. Felt the heat from whatever was on his back and that part made him curious. "You ain't drunk and you ain't hung over, so you ain't got no excuse." One hand, one arm. He moved that much and only that much to reach behind himself and pull the—soft, malleable, warm—object off his back. Clenched it in his hand, opened one eye to take a look, closed it again.

"Breeches," he mumbled.

"And a shirt, too," Rosco informed him. "Pastor Jesse sent them for you. Said you needed clean clothes to make a fresh start in the world."

Fresh start, because today the cell door would open and stay that way. He was meant to walk through it and never come back.

"I don't wanna." He sounded like a petulant, whiny brat. Which left him grateful that he'd mumbled it straight into the mat underneath him like a secret. Just something between the two of them, and Rosco could hear only the tone and not the words. (But then again, with a tone like that, the words weren't really necessary.)

It got him a laugh, anyway. High pitched and silly, full of nonsense words, snorts and snickers and there was nothing to do but open his eyes and turn his head. To look at the tight grin on the marshal's face and the way his eyebrows were raised, and to match the noise with a snort of his own, to drop the new clothes he'd been given (that were not entirely new and he ought to know that, having been on the delivering end of this kind of charity in the past) and push himself up with his arms. Sitting and studying Rosco's pink, shiny face.

"Ain't nobody ever been so slow to get up on their last day in here," Rosco informed him. "I figured I had you trained better than that." Rosco's head cocked to the side like a puppy studying a new and interesting stick it'd found in a meadow. Too intense and Bo rested his elbows on his knees and dipped his head down to scrub his hands through his hair. Itching and scratching and giving in to the fact that he was fully awake now. Out of the world of dreams and into this one where—

"Breakfast smells good," put an end to the thinking.

"That's because it is good," Rosco answered back, chin up and haughty, affronted at the thought that anyone could ever question the goodness of breakfast. "Lulu made it special."

"Ain't you going to miss me, Rosco?" Bo asked, sitting up properly and making room on the cot for the plate to go between them like it had most mornings this week. The marshal hustled around, doing his wifely duty of fetching the food from where it sat on his desk, bringing it into the cell and setting it in front of Bo. "And the fine breakfasts you get when I'm here?"

"Gyu," Rosco replied, sitting at the foot of the cot and picking up one of the forks. Speared a sausage and popped it into his mouth before starting to talk in earnest. "I ain't got to tell her I let you out."

"Ain't she going to get suspicious when she sees me on the street?" He had it on pretty good authority that he was fairly recognizable. Not too many men as tall as him, nor as blonde. Nor with near as pretty a smile.

"Babe," the marshal said soberly, "you got to walk through that door sometime. A jail ain't no place to live."

"I ain't," he said, and jammed a forkful of hashed brown potatoes into his mouth. Too many, it made him cough, made tears come to his eyes. At least, he hoped that was the way Rosco saw it. "Got no place to go," he choked out.

"Well, you can't stay here. I got to keep this place open for the real criminals. And don't you go out there getting drunk and beat up again just so you can stay here. Next time you do that I'm just going to let Big Ed Little have at you and I ain't going to stop him."

"You can't do that. You're the law of this county. You can't let nobody beat on nobody else on purpose."

Rosco laughed at him. "Of course I can't. And you can't stay here. The jail is no place for a boy like you."

"I ain't got to stay in the jail," Bo answered, staring into the plate. Picking his next bite or his next words; either way, he didn't look up. "I could be part of your posse. I reckon I fight good enough. And I'm the best horseman in the county." Or at least the best horseman that he knew of, but he didn't figure there was anyone he couldn't outride if the opportunity arose.

"And you ain't never shot off a gun." No, he hadn't, but there were other things he could do, and he opened his mouth to explain them, but he didn't get very far. "Besides. A lawman has to be mean. Mean and tough," spoken through a clenched jaw to show Bo just exactly how mean and tough he was. "A lawman's got to have a nose for trouble," and Rosco sniffed the air to prove his point. A little wrinkle there, because he'd just gotten a powerful whiff of sweat and morning breath. Then his chin lifted in pride again. "A lawman has got to be willing to give his soul to the law, to live and breathe the mean streets of Trenton." The marshal stood then, all the better to tell his epic tale of all the things a lawman was. "You can't think twice, and you can't never hesitate, you just got to—" whatever it was you had to do, it got expressed in jerking little gestures. It might have been shooting someone; then again, it might have been strutting like a rooster. It was really hard to tell. Then it stopped, got quiet and serious. "You got to know, just from looking, whether a man is good or bad. And _you_ ain't never going to be able to do that." Rosco sat back down.

"I—"

"No, Babe, you ain't. You trust too easy. You look at a man and you figure you can make him your friend if only you smile at him right, or talk right, or do nice things for him. You don't never get suspicious of no one, and you don't expect the worst, ever." The marshal sighed then, at all the things Bo was not, or that he assumed Bo could never be. "A lawman can't have friends, Babe. Or a family, or nothing more than the law. And the law ain't enough to keep _you_ company, boy."

"You'd keep me company," Bo offered, "and I'd keep you company."

"Boy, you ain't got a cynical bone in your body. Just listen to you talk."

Well, heck, that wasn't any kind of an obstacle. "I could learn."

The laugh that followed that was hard, almost barked out. Containing more bile than any sound he'd ever heard the marshal make.

"I ain't a smart man," Rosco confessed. "Leastwise, not about important things. I know plenty about the law and how it works. How all the pieces fit together, and it's simple. Either you're law-abiding or law-breaking, and either I protect you or I arrest you. Of course," very quiet and serious, "sometimes it turns out that I'm doing both at once." Pause there to get a good forkful of the last good breakfast either of them was likely to have for awhile. "But I don't understand a lot of other things. Like family. How come I got one, and you don't. Boy," sounded like he was interrupting himself to change the subject. "You need to get a job. Not a lawman's job, just, any kind of job. In the blacksmith's or the apothecary or the mines—no, not the mines. Someplace else. And then you get yourself a room at Miz Tisdale's and you find yourself a nice girl. Marry her and have," babies, that was what a man did when he got married. But the notion was crazy, Bo Sheridan raising babies. Bo shuddered, Rosco shook his head. At least, it seemed, they agreed on that much. "I ain't got no idea how it could be that you ain't growed up with family all around you, when that's what you was made for. And I can't figure why there's all them boys out there leaving the families they got so they can go out feuding. But I figure, just because you didn't start out with family don't mean you can't make one, Babe. So you just stay away from that dang feud and you settle down with some nice girl."

Well. That was an interesting notion that absolutely ignored the fact that Bo Sheridan was born for adventure. And if he didn't know where he was going when he walked out from the bars around him, he knew there was no job, no house, no white fence out front that was going to make him happy. Even if Rosco thought they would.

"You can't be afraid to go out and find your life, boy," Rosco informed him, standing up and grabbing the now empty plate. Bo couldn't swear he remembered eating much, but it didn't matter now; the food was all gone one way or another. "You can't go hiding behind bars." Although the marshal seemed to be walking out and closing the clanking door behind him without any sense of absurdity or irony. Putting down the plate with a clatter and digging out his keys to lock Bo in. "Or a badge. Now I got lawman things to do. So you just sit in there and think on it. I'll be back to let you loose after a while."


	23. Saturday Night

**23. Saturday Night**

Cleaning up messes. Well, she'd been taught how to do that sometime back. How to make sure that she was thorough about it and didn't leave any dirty remnants behind. She was good enough at doing it, she supposed, average to above average in skill.

Luke was making her better at it than she ever wanted to be.

"You know him best, Yellow-eye." Yes, she knew Luke. Inside and out, and most days she liked him but today she'd prefer to hit him over the head with something. A parasol if she had one, but then she remembered that she'd given up that sort of thing long ago, along with everything that was pretty or frilly. "So you can tell me, what does he like?"

She was good enough at cleaning up messes, but this one was trickier than most. What with her sitting there in breeches, her smooth face with its slender jaw just feet away from that of another woman. Being Yellow-eye was easy enough in the company of men who never did look too closely or think too hard. Didn't seem to even notice that she went off into the privacy of the woods to do what they had no shame about doing out in the open, weren't terribly aware of the fact that she never dressed or bathed in front of the rest of them. They couldn't see what was right there before their eyes, because men were blind fools.

Ruby was also a fool, but she wasn't blind. Just a fool in love with a man that wasn't precisely capable of loving her back right now. Or loving anyone, maybe, Daisy excepted because she was family. Yellow-eye wasn't and it was getting awfully hard to be two people, especially since she was starting to dislike the one she spent the most time as.

Men, she'd realized somewhere over the past three years, didn't talk much. Grunted some, kept their silence more, and only when they really figured there was no alternative would they get around to saying things.

"I wouldn't waste my time on Duke, if I was you." There were better ways to say it, but there were worse ones and splitting the difference was the hard part. Because she understood Ruby, she knew what the girl wanted to do. How she wanted to tame Luke, to be the one who could gentle that otherwise bucking horse, to be the one who brought out his sweet side. It was an honorable intention and there was no way in the world that Ruby could do it.

"Fine," Ruby huffed, moving like she was going to get up off the porch of the apothecary where they had been sitting quietly, watching the couples drift in and out. Somewhere in those years between her childhood visits to Trenton and the day she'd moved down here on a permanent basis, the apothecary had cleared away a section that had been dedicated to nothing memorable and replaced it with a counter. Almost a mockery of the saloon on the next block, because it was no more than a mirror image of the bar. Except the drinks it served were sugary and non-intoxicating. If people left here all light in the head, well, it was because of the company they kept, not the contents of their bellies. It had become the place where nice boys took respectable girls for an hour or two on Saturday nights. And Sunday afternoons, and any other time that a girl's parents might be persuaded to let her out of their sight for a little while. It was hard to watch, sometimes, all those happy couples coming in and out and it left a lonely feeling in Daisy's gut. She could only imagine how it made Ruby feel.

"No," she said, grabbing the poor girl's hand. "Wait, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that." Sounded every bit to her ears like one woman talking to another. She could only hope that being seen holding the hand of a prostitute would do good things for Yellow-eye's reputation with the ladies and might make up for the squeaky-sounding voice.

Ruby huffed, pouted, sat. Looking past the low cut of her neckline, she really was quite a pretty girl, round brown eyes peering through the natural curls in the near-black fringe of hair across her forehead. Left Daisy to wonder how someone so full of hope and promise could end up with Miss Mabel, but then again, she wasn't really any better. She dressed inappropriately and did things no lady ought to do, too.

"Duke," she had to remind herself to call him that. Especially with this girl, who was used to charming men into getting what she wanted and couldn't see why Yellow-eye should be any different. (So long, that was, as Daisy slouched and kept her face in the shadows. Otherwise she was pretty sure that Ruby would be able to see precisely why Yellow-eye was different.) "Don't want nothing you can give him. Don't take it personal," she hastened to add when the prostitute's hands went straight to her hips in flouncing annoyance. "He don't want nothing I can give him neither." Now see, that just sounded bad. Wrong, and anyone overhearing that one would think all the worst things.

Ruby just arched an eyebrow. A perfectly preened eyebrow, and that gave it more depth of meaning. Interesting, and Daisy had never really thought about that before, how being a woman made it possible to so clearly articulate certain things with only the slightest of movements.

"I mean," she said, and let her knee fall outward. Such a small gesture, opening her legs instead of keeping them tightly closed, and it always seemed to turn her right back into a man. Gave her a devil-may-care attitude and a sense of freedom. "What Duke wants, ain't no one can give him." Give or take information about who was responsible for killing his pa, but even that probably wouldn't be a good thing for Luke to have. Because he'd exact whatever revenge he felt he had a right to, and then what? Prison or the noose; she had no urge to watch Luke consign himself to either.

Ruby laughed, high and tinkling. Flushed up pink and just look at how the spectacle of it caught Cletus Hogg's attention. Sure, the medical assistant was accompanying Laverne Brewster, his meaty hand gripping around her scrawny little elbow and guiding her up the stairs to the front door of the apothecary, but his eyes were just about bugging out of his head, looking at Ruby. A quick wink for what he figured was Yellow-eye's conquest of the prostitute and Cletus got himself smacked by his date. Started explaining, loud and fast, while he accompanied her up the steps.

"Men," Ruby said, watching how Cletus stumbled over the threshold of the apothecary, still justifying himself at high speed. "Y'all are fools," she accused.

Yellow-eye was supposed to protest here, Daisy was fairly certain. Supposed to defend the male gender, but she couldn't think of a single word with which to refute the notion.

"Y'all think fighting is the most important thing you could be doing. Out there raising a ruckus, and even when you ain't doing that you're just waiting for the next chance to go out and do it some more. Never at a moment's peace. Then you come to us girls looking for something, but you don't never let us give you what you really need."

"What," had to stop, had to deepen her voice a little more. "What do we really need?"

"Everybody needs love, dummy," Ruby answered back, swatting Daisy on the leg. Or Yellow-eye, Ruby definitely thought it was Yellow-eye's leg, what with how a smack wasn't enough, now the prostitute's pale fingers were walking their way up the seam of her breeches. "Didn't you ever let nobody love you?"

Well, so much for sitting like a man. Daisy snapped her knees back together, which pretty much got her thigh out of harm's way.

"My love life," which until recently had pretty much consisted of running away from a marriage she didn't want, and now involved daydreaming about Enos Strate, "ain't what you brought me over here to discuss."

Self-satisfied little smile from the prostitute at how she'd managed to make that weird Yellow-eye all nervous and flushed. Sure enough, Ruby had earned that wicked grin, but it would disappear if she knew the real reason Yellow-eye had blanched and avoided her more intimate touches.

The prostitute got serious again. "Duke needs love," she declared, jutted chin just daring Daisy to refute that brilliant assertion. Which was going to be awfully hard, when Daisy agreed. Luke needed love and he'd never accept it from this girl because he couldn't love her back.

"He's—" she tried, stopped. Got her bearings and started over. "Duke ain't about to let no one love him right now." Daisy fully believed that. Even though he had a habit of pining for Mary Kaye Porter, it was mostly because she could be counted on not to love him back. Luke was too full of hate or vengeance or whatever that bitterness was that festered inside of him to let anyone care about him. "He ain't been right since his folks died."

"What do you know?" Ruby scoffed, but it wasn't mean. Wasn't even angry. It was just sad.

"I know that he ain't," had to be careful here, had to explain it without mentioning Luke's burning need for revenge. "He ain't got no clear thoughts in his head, other than missing his folks. And missing his life from before his folks passed. His only solace is when he goes to spend time in them empty fields where the old Duke farmhouse used to be."

"Well, that's just dumb," Ruby informed her. "I ain't got no folks no more, neither, but you don't see me acting like a drunken dunce in the saloon, embarrassing myself and pushing people away just for being kind. And I sure as heck don't go and moon for the past on my old front porch."

"It ain't dumb, Ruby. It's just how he handles things. Like you handle things by going off and becoming a prostitute and you can't go telling me that's a more noble thing than what L—" see, now, that was what getting defensive and protecting her kin did to her. Made her slip up and forget wisdom. "Duke does. If he gets drunk and foolish from time to time, well, at least by the next day, he's sober. I ain't sure how you manage to make yourself feel dignified after a night of what you do." Anger and ire, and she ought to know better, but she always had been cursed with a short temper and just like she could aim a gun she could make her barbs hit where they hurt most.

"Men," Ruby bristled at her. "I should have known better than to expect anything useful to come out of any of your mouths."

"Ruby," she tried, figured she really ought to apologize, but the prostitute was already up on her feet, moving quickly in those heeled shoes, the same kind in which Daisy had grown to feel clumsy and to hate.

"I think you've said enough, Mister Yellow-eye. Good evening," and the girl flounced away, downright ravishing in her fury.

Daisy considered going after her, but there came a chuckle from behind her. Cletus Hogg, and it was a funny thing how he seemed to have lost his companion, too, somewhere in the last several minutes.

"Well, buddy," the doctor's assistant said as he plopped densely onto the porch next to her, wide hand thumping solidly on her shoulder. "Looks like we're both having about the same kind of luck."

Which was enough to make her laugh, lean back, and just enjoy the company of another one of the lost souls from this corner of Georgia.


	24. Visions

**24. Visions**

Two dollars. Tucked into the front pocket of his new breeches, and that was the sum of his life. Not bad, when it came down to it; there were plenty of people with less. Things, so many things that could be done with that sum of money, and he thought of them. Considered each quite seriously and eliminated most of them during the four minute walk from the jail to the saloon. Long shadow stretching out in front of him, directing him forward like a compass point.

Lots of things he could have done with two dollars, like follow Rosco's advice and get himself a room in Miz Tisdale's boarding house. Could get a good night's sleep and a country breakfast as part of his rent, then start looking for work in the morning. Fail or succeed, he could be in search of the perfect girl to complete the marshal's dream for him come evening and then have himself a nice little date with the pennies left over. Within a day he could be on that path to the tidy vision of a life that Rosco figured he ought to have. It was a fine plan, but he reckoned it could wait. (Forever, maybe.)

The saloon loomed, mostly quiet, but it was relatively early in the evening. The restaurant was only three doors down, and the general store would also have food, but for now his belly was satiated with Lulu's fine cooking. His tongue, however, was thirsty.

"Well," must mean his tongue had led him into the saloon, because that was Doc Appleby greeting him. "If it ain't Babe Sheridan."

Bo offered one of his most ingratiating smiles. Because Doc's was the first face he'd seen in a week that didn't belong to a lawman or a minister. Because the early evening sun was glinting off of every reflective surface in the place, giving it a warm, welcoming, yellowish glow. Because it felt good to stretch the muscles in his face.

Because Doc was the man who could quench his thirst. "Red eye," he ordered, pointing loosely at the jugs and bottles behind the bar.

"You sure about that, Babe?" got asked right back at him, and he felt that smile flatten out into an annoyed press of lips. Fist digging into his pocket and he pulled out a coin without any amount of patience. Laid it on the bar and raised his eyebrow.

_Yeah, I'm sure. Now pour the dang whiskey._

"Wouldn't want those temperance ladies getting you," Doc supplied by way of explanation.

Bo laughed at that part. "Doc, all the ladies want me. Them temperance ladies are just going to have to wait their turn."

The bartender cracked a smile, shook his balding head and fished under the bar. Pulled up a jug and a glass and poured him a finger's worth. Looked at Bo's coin and mumbled something about running a tab for him, then pulled out a rag to mop away nonexistent condensation from the varnished surface of the bar. Stayed no more than a few steps away from Bo because he was the only one in the saloon that was actually drinking. There were a couple of older guys at a table in back playing what looked like checkers, and a couple of Mabel's girls sitting here or there, fanning themselves in the summer heat.

"What's," Bo started, licked his lips and took a sip. Frowned at how little that left in his glass and figured he was going to have to make sure that double the amount made it into his next glass. "How have things been?"

A shrug.

"Quiet then?" It seemed to him that one of the more important qualities in a bartender was that they held up their half of the conversation.

"Mostly. There's been some ruckus now and then. Nothing too unusual." Bo signaled that he was ready for his next drink and Doc raised his eyebrows at him. "You sure?" he asked again.

"Doc." Patience, Miss Lavinia used to tell him, was a virtue with which he had never been blessed. But she'd tried, she'd done what she could to teach him not to hit the bigger boys just because they'd called him a name or messed up his hair, maybe given him a shove. She'd suggested any number of alternatives, like counting to ten or using words instead of his fists, but it had only worked but so well. He'd learned not to hit first, but his temper was always there, right under the surface. "I'm sure, and since when do you got to ask?"

Hands up in surrender, as if Bo were holding him at gunpoint (as if Bo even owned a gun, but then he didn't figure he needed to advertise that part—let people assume he was armed and they'd give him the benefit of any doubt that arose). The jug came out again, Doc pouring out more this time. Since he was sure and all.

"Anybody," Bo started again, had a little whiskey in him this time and a little less careful thought, too. "Ask where I was?" _Or otherwise even seem to notice I was gone?_ But he still had enough self-control to keep himself from saying that much.

"Sure," Doc answered, bending over and then there was the clank and tinkle of glasses and bottles being rearranged behind the bar. "The story pretty much went that you ran home to your mama."

"What?" Bo squeaked out, hated that his voice betrayed him at all the worst times. "I ain't even got a mama."

"Well, of course not," Doc placated, standing back up to his full height and cocking his head to the side to study him. "Everyone knows that, Babe. It was one of them figurative things. You know what figurative means, right?"

"Sure I do," he snapped back, heatedly. "Of course I do." He was as educated as any boy his age. Maybe more so, what with his lessons having been just about doubled thanks to how he had to recite them all over again to Miss Lavinia. He knew perfectly well that saying something figuratively was pretty much just telling a lie as if it were the truth. "And I ain't got no figurative mama, neither."

"They meant the orphanage, Babe," Doc explained, shaking his head. At Bo, at a smudge he'd just discovered on the bar's surface, at the fly that buzzed by on its way to better places. "That's what the story was, that you couldn't handle life in the feud, so you went back to the orphanage."

"Dang it, Doc," he just about hollered before he thought better of it. Not wise to be nasty to the man who controlled the whiskey. Not to mention how the bent-backed oldsters playing checkers at the rear of the saloon suddenly seemed to find the conversation taking place up at the bar quite fascinating. "I was in jail."

"Well now, there was that story, too," the bartender confided. "But no one really thought it was true. And the marshal, he wouldn't say whether you was there or not. Just said his ijits and wijits and told everyone to tend to their own concerns." Which might have been some sort of an attempt to spare Bo the embarrassment, but was more likely Rosco being Rosco. Proprietary and just a little bit strange. "Some folks figure you got arrested but the marshal let you go, and then others say you was about to get arrested but you ran off. Either way, you was supposed to have run back to the orphanage for shelter. And them ladies there, they wouldn't want you drinking no whiskey, Babe."

"Them ladies ain't got no say in what I do, and they ain't for two years now. I was in jail for a week because I didn't have the seven dollar fine the marshal levied against me," he growled back. Tried to keep his voice low because it was less likely to crack that way.

"All right," seemed to be some sort of a concession to his version of events being at least halfway believed, since the jug came back up onto the bar, at the ready to be poured into his glass whenever he got to asking for it.

He sat quietly for a minute, his mind spinning over the notion that anyone would be fool enough to have trouble recognizing that he was far too self-sufficient to go back to the orphanage. Besides, there was barely enough food and clothing to go around for the little kids who really needed it.

"What about Doolin?" he asked. "And Leadbelly? They say anything at all?" Sure, he'd been told more than once that they didn't care about him, but the marshal was an odd and pretty much friendless man, so Bo didn't completely trust his judgment about that sort of thing, anyway.

"Leadbelly." Doc paused there, squinting off at nothing at all, like he had to work to remember whatever it was that Leadbelly had said. "He's the big one, ain't he? Broad chested?" Or maybe just remember who Leadbelly was at all.

"You got to know him, Doc. I been coming in here with him all summer."

"Right, there's the skinny one and the broad-chested one. And the skinny one," which seemed to be Doc's way of referring to Doolin, "talked a lot, but didn't actually say much of anything. Just a bunch of nonsense. So it would be Leadbelly then, that was the one said you went back to the orphanage because you wasn't half man enough to handle yourself in the feud."

"What?" and there his voice went again, cracking into that range where only girls ought to talk.

Doc Appleby shrugged and got really interested in his own fingers. Stared at them, at the nails then turned one hand over to look at the palm side.

"What else did he say?" That one came out more like a hiss.

"Babe, it don't matter what he said. You know what the truth is, so why bother listening to some silly boy who has more mouth than brains?" Doc's hands got wiped on his apron then dropped to his sides. He stood there looking at Bo, at the fly that had returned from wherever it had gone just to buzz around his head. A sigh; the bartender could see that there was no chance of the subject being dropped. "He said it was a good thing that you went back to the orphanage, because looking out for you was taking up too much of his time. You was holding him back, but now he had some kind of a great plan and he was going to make his mark on this feud. He figured Ol' Nut Hickory would probably make him captain of the troops after this one. Of course, he picked up a limp somewhere along the way, so I don't figure he's going to do this great thing anytime too soon." Doc cleared his throat like maybe he had more to say. Something that verbally patted Bo on the head, no doubt, and told him not to worry about mean boys because one day he'd be all grown up and nobody would be nasty to him anymore. Words, undoubtedly, that Bo had no interest in hearing.

So he gestured toward the whiskey, and Doc started to pull on the cork, but, "Give me the whole jug."

"It'll cost you a dollar and twenty-five cents, Babe," the bartender informed him, looking awfully dubious about Bo having that much. "It'd be just twenty-five if it wasn't for that dang tax."

"Here," Bo ground out at him from between clenched teeth. Trying to be polite because he'd been raised that way, because Doc Appleby was a hapless fool, but he wasn't to blame for what he'd eavesdropped on. Hand in the pocket of his breeches, and he dragged out a bunch more coins. Counted out enough to get himself what he wanted, thanked the bartender, and made his way out the swinging doors.

Rooms in boarding houses were overrated anyway, especially in comparison to the solid weight of a near-gallon of whiskey under his arm.

For almost two years he'd become an expert at finding an alley to settle into for the night, between two stores or next to the restaurant. Then, over the past two months, he'd learned about sleeping in pastures and wooded areas. Outside of the city where the air was crisp and cool, and frogs talked the night away about nee-deeps and burraps. Bo reckoned, since it was just himself that he was deciding for and no one else he had to ask or think about, that he might just as well take his whiskey and head out into the wilderness. It felt more welcoming tonight.

He sipped some, walked more. The sky got dark and he didn't notice or didn't care. Didn't figure it mattered when there wasn't much of anyone that wanted him around anyway. Wandered along an overgrown trail where the briars tried to snag in his clothes and pretty much decided that he hoped morning wouldn't ever bother to come.

A flash of light, an echoing bang. Close, too close and it got followed by a scream of pain. A voice said something – might have been _that'll serve you _– and the crunch of feet running over dead leaves, then a horse whinnying.

After that there was nothing else to hear over the pounding of his heart in his ears.


	25. The Last Resort

**25. The Last Resort**

Maybe he had some remnant pride about the beauty of Dade County as he remembered it from his childhood, maybe he figured it would be for the best if the governor of the state came and went without anything untoward happening to him. Maybe he thought it wasn't the poor girl's fault that her daddy had chosen the worst possible spot in the state to stage her wedding, and maybe he figured the beginning of a new family was worth something. Maybe he thought that if it was his pa and ma's wedding, he would have wanted it to go off without a hitch. (Whatever it was, he knew it wasn't the marshal's request that had him out here alone in the dark, wandering into enemy territory on foot with nothing but his wits to protect him.)

"That's far enough," came the call of a nervous, nasal voice, the sound of a man with a perpetual runny nose. Except, as far as Luke knew, Grady Byrd hadn't ever been particularly sickly. Just whiny.

Luke stopped where he was, hands on his hips. Eyebrows raised at the foolishness of it, him standing out here in the open with no means of self-defense, and three of them over there, huddled together behind an old, half broken down cattle fence. Moonlight wasn't much to see by, but they ought to have figured out that he was waiting for them to recognize the ridiculousness of their situation.

"I ain't armed," he pronounced. And they could, if they so desired, deafen their ears to the sarcasm in his tone and take it as strictly factual. Because it was. He had no guns on him or near him or backing him up in any way. Nothing on his hip other than a flask, and even that wasn't loaded with anything more than air because he had no intentions of drinking tonight. "How about you, Jude?" he called across the open space between them to the tall man in the clump of three. "You ever get your gun working?"

A chuckle, deep and quiet. "Nope," came back at him in a relaxed, easy tone that was an utter contrast to Grady Byrd's nervous chirping. "I don't reckon I need a working gun right now, do I?"

No, he really didn't. This was a diplomatic mission, and he had passed word that the sole purpose of him meeting up with the higher ranking members of the Hickory gang was to talk. Just that, nothing more and it had taken him two days to set up, because everything had to be done through intermediaries. Messages passed through Doc Appleby and Jake the wheelwright, Miz Tisdale and Old Man Rheubottom at the mercantile; veritable treasure hunts through the town to figure out who had which bit of information, but clearly his request had gotten to its intended recipients.

And then some.

Because the third man huddled into the mass (and now that he'd had a full minute to look at them he could see that Jude Emery was the center of the group and the other two men were all but clinging to him) was a surprise. Quirt McQuade was just about legendary by now, having been a part of the feud for as far back as anyone could say, and rumored to have been tangled up in the start of it. He had some sort of standing grudge against Cap Porter and his kin, and there was a tale about money that was once his managing to wind up in the hands of an unspecified member of the family.

Somehow or other, Luke's request to talk had merited McQuade's attention and that was downright flattering.

"Just," the man in question grumbled at him in that voice that sounded like he'd swallowed a handful of gravel. "Stay right where you are, and tell us what you come here to say."

It was hard not to laugh at the spooked line of men in front of him. Or to laugh at two of them because Jude Emery actually seemed to be a pretty cool customer and Luke might even have halfway liked him. He wanted to think that Jude had just joined the wrong gang, but it wasn't as simple as that, because Luke wasn't even sure that there was such a thing as the right gang.

"I ain't armed," he reminded them. It was part of the negotiation that went into this meeting happening at all – no guns. Luke stuck to the bargain even though he knew the Hickorys wouldn't, because he was a Duke, because he had nothing at all in this world other than pride and honor. (And maybe the sense that if he got himself killed out here that Daisy would never forgive him for it, but he didn't want to think about that.) He didn't guess that any of the rest of them had kept to their side of the deal, figured there were at least three guns over there and two of them probably even worked. "You reckon I can come close enough we ain't got to shout our business across this field?" Which he figured had ears. Maybe a half a dozen of them, hidden behind cornstalks. And he was pretty sure those ears had guns trained on him too.

The oddest thing, the way he could feel his heartbeat, was aware of every breath of air he took in and how crisp it was, how downright good it felt. Standing here with nothing but his tongue and his wits to protect him and maybe for the first time since he used to till his pa's fields, he felt _alive_.

"I don't reckon there's any reason you can't," Jude answered, followed by a series of _but-but-but _sounds as Grady Byrd tried to express his displeasure with the notion. So Luke ambled up, smelling the green of the grass and hearing the cicadas sing, letting the moonlight wash over him and it was fresh, so different from the murky stagnation that his days had taken on. Each step he took echoed within him as progress toward—something, he didn't know what. Half of him just wanted to keep right on walking up to the three men and then on past them. Except there was a reason he'd called this little meeting, so he stopped about ten paces short of the fence. Figured it ought to be enough breathing room for the cowards that were clinging to Jude like a lifeline.

"Seems like," Luke started, speaking slow and easy. Kind of like he was trying to reason with a jackass. Wasn't going to work too well, but no one could say he hadn't tried. "We both got injured and dead, and y'all even got incarcerated." And Luke's recently-broken nose still throbbed when he exerted himself, though he figured it'd stop doing that in another day or so.

"In—what?" Grady Byrd sniveled like only he would. "He said we got in-whatted?"

"Carcerated," Jude answered with more patience than Luke would have under the circumstances. In fact, he gave a silent thanks right then and there that Grady Byrd was a Hickory, because if Luke had ever been compelled to work next to him for any period of time, he would have been forced to kill him by now. Or at least tie a gag into his mouth so he'd stop that incessant whining noise of his. "It means in jail," Jude further explained to the man at his side, then he turned toward Luke. "And we ain't got any of those, leastwise none that I know of."

Luke shrugged because it didn't matter. There were enough dead and injured to make his point valid anyway. "Either way, ain't none of us full strength. I'm figuring we call an all out truce."

"Why, you ain't got the right to call one of them. Does he have the right to call one of them?" Grady asked Jude, and got told to just hush by McQuade. "I just don't think he can do that," Byrd mumbled, still agitated but trying to quiet it now. "Not without the boss man saying so."

Well, waiting for Hickory and Porter to come around to a truce was like waiting for the sky to rain chickens. It might happen, but no one ought to go holding their breath in anticipation.

"Not forever," Luke clarified, again talking slow and easy so that even the brainless ought to be able to follow along with his words. "Just for say, a week or so. To let those that ain't already dead recuperate."

Some quiet sniveling over there from Grady Byrd, and Jude seemed to be thinking the proposition over a bit.

"You get your week off," McQuade grumbled. "What's in it for us?"

Luke figured that same week of no one trying to kill them ought to be enough. Then again, Jude seemed to think that McQuade's question had some amount of validity, and Luke was smart enough to know that whatever Jude agreed to, the others would follow. McQuade might have been with the feud longer, probably had higher rank and was more important in name, but he was a coward.

Luke could stand on pretense, he could convince himself that what mattered most was that he kept control of the situation. He could outsmart himself in a heartbeat, if he let himself. Or he could deal straight. "What do you want?"

He watched as the question was considered. Saw Grady Byrd's mouth start moving because the man had no idea what he wanted, other than to hear himself talk. Saw the way McQuade took a mental step backwards, because he hadn't expected the question. Saw Jude smile, because he recognized the challenge in it. This right here was a battle of the wits, and Luke had just upped the ante.

"Tell you what," Luke offered, because he didn't want to stand here all night and stare at the three of them. Not that he had pressing plans or anyplace special he needed to be, but the men weren't all that pretty to look at. "You boys get the saloon all to yourselves that week. You all just gather there and do whatever you like because we'll stay out."

It sounded generous, of course it did. On the surface it was a terrific proposition that gave the Hickory boys the chance to raise some unchecked rabble, to hoot and holler and get just as drunk and loud as they wanted to without consideration for whose ears might overhear what.

Theoretically, anyway, but they had no idea about Rosco or about the Governor's plans to be here and what the marshal was likely to do to try to make the town look halfway respectable. Probably wouldn't manage too well, would most likely fail spectacularly, but Rosco would try. He'd be in that saloon every night nagging the men to drink less and quit gambling, to stop sneaking their fingers under the hems of the prostitutes' dresses, that was if he didn't send the poor girls up to their rooms then form himself a human barricade at the steps to keep the men from following after them. Oh, it would be a lousy week to be in town, and Luke had every plan in the world of keeping his men out of that mess anyway. Sending the Hickorys right into the heart of it would just be a little side bonus.

"All right," Jude agreed without bothering to ask the other two men. Who were both beyond the age where they ought to make full use of the saloon, and they probably had objections but no one waited to hear them. Luke nodded his head that they were all settled, then took those last few steps up to the fence to shake Jude's hand. Because he had integrity, because it was the proper way that men sealed agreements, because having outsmarted Jude Emery had left him feeling – what was it, something he hadn't experienced in a long time – happy? Proud? Alive and just slightly excited about it, too.

"See you in a week," Luke said by way of parting words. "Not before," reminded them all of what they'd just shook on. Then he took his leave.

He wandered around for a bit, mostly letting his feet take him where they wanted with a few deliberate turns mixed in just to confuse anyone who might have seen fit to follow him. When he was sure that all the sounds around him were purely animal, he struck out through the trees, cut across old ruts where a road once had been, and strolled out into the meadow that sprawled out widely in front of him. Stood there and saw how the moonlight caught in the weeds and grasses, tasted the sweetness of the air, felt his blood rushing through him. Remembered other nights in this same field and the woods to the east, cooking up moonshine and watching the stars twinkle. Felt home seep into him like the warmth of his mother's arms on a cold night, had the strangest notion that he wasn't alone. That if he spoke to his father right now he might actually get an answer.

Turned, with half a smile on his face, toward where he felt the presence of someone else. Saw the flash from the muzzle at the same time the pain hit him like a broken heart, searing right though from one side of his chest to the other. The sound got there late, then echoed off the mountains to come back at him again as he fell, his knees hitting the ground first, followed by his arm, chest, head and the pain sang out through his body again. At last he was sprawled across the dirt that smelled like home, one arm clenched tight to his body while the other stretched out, reaching for someone who wasn't there.


	26. Reprise

**_Author's note: _**_I feel kind of like the balladeer in _Carnival of Thrills_ when Bo is getting locked up in the cell next to Luke's - "Well, I been wanting the boys to get back together" - complete with the implied "but not like this." Still, together is together, right?  
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_Thanks for coming along on another ride with me. Even if this one is done on horseback instead of an orange clunker car.  
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_Don't forget, the original version of this story, complete with lyrics epigraphs, can be found on AO3. There's a link on my profile to get you there._

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><p><strong>26. Reprise<strong>

A jug of whiskey wasn't much of a shield. He didn't really expect it to be either, but he carried it out in front of his body anyway. Maybe it was an offering, maybe it was his guiding star. Maybe it didn't matter what it was because he was headed straight into the vicinity where gunfire had rung out minutes before.

He could just see Miss Lavinia shaking her head. Doc Cooter, too, because this kind of thing usually led to his office, eventually. Bo had apparently gotten his feelings all backwards or something, mixed up and in the wrong order. That was what Lavinia would scold when she was patching up some part of him that had gotten ripped open, anyway. That when he was supposed to be afraid he got curious. Or mad, and either way he walked right into trouble and only got afraid afterward, when the blood was flowing and she'd bundled him into the wagon for a sudden trip to Doc Cooter's up on Possum Hill. The needle to stitch up what he'd torn and _then_ he was scared.

Maybe Miss Lavinia had a point back then, maybe she'd still have one now if she were here. If she'd lived, but she hadn't. She'd taken to coughing into her handkerchief, then she'd taken to her bed, then she'd had to be taken to the doctor. Two months and she was gone, leaving no one behind to tell him that he was going in the wrong direction now, walking toward trouble instead of away from it. So he held his jug out in front of him and just kept on going.

The wind made things move in the suddenly too-bright moonlight, gusting past his ears and leaving the trees swaying overhead. He was nowhere he'd ever been before, but he wasn't lost, he was just letting his instincts carry him toward where his ears had heard that percussive pop. Caution might have been wise, but he felt safe here. Protected, oddly. Like nothing bad could happen to him on these grounds.

Of course, it was right about then that he heard the low cursing, the mumbles that bordered on moans. Ghosts probably sounded like that; maybe it was Lavinia come to tell him a thing or two after all. Except he somehow figured that ghosts would float, that they'd approach from the heavens, and this sound came from low. And not far away.

"Come on," those mumbles said. "Just finish me." Sounded far too human to be particularly terrifying. Not to mention that there was a heaviness to the voice, like a man (which ruled out Lavinia, even if nothing else had by now) who'd had too much to drink, or just maybe had too much lead in him somewhere. Bullet-shaped lead.

"Where are you?" Dumb question, he knew it the minute it was out of his mouth. If the man kept moaning like that, he'd find him anyway. But if Bo spooked him and he shut up, he could be here all night, stalking through the long weeds and looking. Besides, if the injured man was waving a gun around, well, now he had half a chance of figuring out in which direction to aim it.

"Coward," came growling back at him from not too far away, and then he saw it. A lump of a man, curled into himself. Somewhere between sitting and lying, gripping onto his own shoulder and cussing Bo, his mother, his friends, and anything else he could think of. (Bo didn't have the heart to explain how there was no point in cursing half those things, since he didn't have them in the first place.) "Come on, put an end to it already."

"What?" Didn't seem fair to make a bleeding man explain himself, but he wasn't entirely sure what it was that he was supposed to put an end to.

"Shoot me," must have seemed perfectly obvious to the stranger on the ground, what with how the words were spat in utter frustration.

"I ain't got no gun." That right there might not have been the best admission Bo could have made. Seemed to leave him feeling awfully vulnerable.

"Dang it, me neither," got followed by another moan, a little more writhing. Bo reckoned that whether or not the man was telling the truth about being unarmed, he was in plenty of pain and probably not up to a fight if one were offered him.

"All I got is whiskey," Bo elaborated.

More moans and grumbles, sounded something like _why didn't you say so_. "Bring it here," was clear enough.

He took a few cautious steps toward the stranger and got called a coward again for not moving faster. "What's wrong with you?" he asked.

The arm that the stranger had been clutching himself with moved, pushed against the ground and got him closer to sitting than he had been. Gave him a chance to look over at Bo, to somehow, in the scant light of the moon and through the mask of pain on his pinched face, express incredulity. "I been shot. What's wrong with you?" seemed to be aimed at his questionable intelligence.

"You're Duke," Bo realized and it was an awful moment. Caught somewhere between fear and awe, because this right here was a man that had—well to hear some folks tell it, he could kill a grizzly bear just by looking at him the right way. And here he was, laid low.

"You've got whiskey," came the reminder back at him. "If you ain't going to kill me, the least you could do is let me have a sip."

"All right," Bo agreed because it sounded fair enough. And because if Duke had been disposed toward killing him, he figured he'd be dead already. So he took those eight long strides to close the gap between them, then knelt down in front of the Porter lieutenant. Saw the blood dripping down from his shirt, smudges of it everywhere, including his face. Offered up the bottle, endured another withering look. Brought it back to his own chest, switched hands and uncorked it himself. "Can you hold it well enough to drink?" A bloody hand reached out for it then and Bo gave it over. Watched how the weight of it took away the tenuous balance that Duke had attained, threatened to tip him right back over onto that shoulder where the blood seemed worst. Bo reached across and gripped the left elbow to help hold the other man up while he took a deep swallow.

"Why ain't you got a gun?" Duke complained after he dropped the bottle back down from his lips. Bo took it back from him, corked it and put it off to the side.

"Because I don't like them. Why ain't you?" Because it turned out to be true. Duke was unarmed save for a flask that seemed to be hooked onto his belt.

Duke's hand went across his body to grip at his shoulder again, like he could staunch the flow of blood with just that little. "Babe Sheridan—"

"Bo," he corrected without thought.

"—You are a fool." Well, it was awfully nice to be recognized by the notorious Duke, even if it did lead to him getting called names. "No hat, no gun, and you walked right up to me like I wouldn't kill you in a heartbeat." And then he lost his equilibrium again and started tipping toward the ground.

"I got whiskey," Bo reminded him as he caught hold of Duke's good arm to slow his momentum a little bit. Laying down was probably a good thing for a bleeding man to do, but crashing into the ground injured shoulder first wasn't the best way to do it. "You need a doctor," he pointed out, perfectly reasonably.

Bloody hand let go of torn up shoulder just long enough to wave through the air. "I'm dying," Duke assured him.

He laughed; wasn't a nice thing to do, but it was all nerves. It was—"You ain't dying." Because he couldn't. Because Duke was a legend around here. But more than that, enough people had died and Bo didn't bear any real responsibility for that. His mother had died back before he could do anything about it, and even Doc Cooter couldn't do anything about Miss Lavinia passing. Other men who'd died in the feud had done so far out of his sight, but this time—this death Bo could stop. "You ain't dying and I'm going to get you to a doctor."

"Bah," was Duke's assessment of that plan. "If you ain't gonna shoot me, leave me be and let me die in peace."

"You ain't dying," Bo asserted, no trace of amusement this time. "And even if I had a gun I wouldn't never shoot nobody. Especially not when they was already hurt."

"You'd be a hero if you did," Duke informed him. "Just think of all them Hickorys that'd be falling all over themselves to praise you."

"I'd be a degenerate and a disgrace, and it wouldn't matter what anyone said about me because I was raised better than that. So quit telling me why I ought to kill you."

"All right," Duke agreed, or maybe just gave up the fight. Sounded tired, sounded like a man who needed doctoring right now, but he pointed his bloody finger at the whiskey jug anyway. Bo accommodated him with another sip, even if he did just about have to hold the man's head up so he wouldn't choke on it.

"You got a horse?"

"Yep," came Duke's succinct answer.

"Well," Bo said, his eyes and ears scanning around. "Where is he?"

A cough, or maybe it was a pathetic attempt at a laugh. "Nowheres near here. That was part of the deal I made with you Hickorys. No horse, no gun."

"First off, I ain't a Hickory and I didn't make no deal with you," Bo snapped. "Second, you ain't funny. Third, you figure you can walk if I help you?"

The look Duke gave him pretty much explained how he wasn't exactly funny, either. "Nope," he answered.

"All right then, good. You ain't gonna be able to go nowhere. I'm going to get Doc Cooter." He started to stand.

"Babe," Duke scoffed.

"That's Bo," he insisted. "Don't worry, I'll be back quick as a rabbit. Just don't go asking no one else to kill you while I'm gone." A less scrupulous man might just take him up on it.

"Leave me the whiskey," seemed to be Duke's condition for complying.

"You ain't in no condition," Bo started.

"You got to be kidding me. I'm a Duke, we can hold our liquor."

"I believe you can hold it in your belly," Bo clarified. "But you only got one good hand."

"I'm dying," Duke reminded him. "You wouldn't fulfill a dying man's last wish?"

"Tell you what," Bo offered. "You stop planning to die, and I'll pour enough in that flask of yours to hold you until I can get back with the doc. Deal?"

That seemed to be acceptable to both parties, so Bo took the flask off Duke's belt, held it in a shaky hand. Did his best to get a reasonable amount of liquid from the larger vessel into the smaller, and managed to pour more than he wanted to onto his own hands and the ground. Finally, when he figured he'd transferred enough whiskey to say he'd kept to his half of the bargain, he capped the flask and handed it to Duke.

"That's for the pain," he instructed. "Don't you go choking on it, you hear me?"

"No dying," Duke agreed.

Then, finally, Bo was free to set off running for Doc Cooter's place. But first he'd have to go back the way he came until he recognized where he was and could set a course. It was likely to be a long night of suffering for the bleeding man. Bo stashed the jug of whiskey in a bush too far away for Duke to get to it on his own, then took off to running as fast as he could.


	27. Hotel California

**27. Hotel California**

It started rationally. He was on land, his land to be specific. Had to be his, by rights the title would have passed on to him upon his pa's death. He'd never sold it so it must still belong to him – smelled right, the same soil, grasses, and that stone under his hip that was digging in hard enough to leave an impression felt just about right. Land, his land, which was nowhere near an ocean, and yet he was rocking on waves anyway.

Took a gulp of young Babe Sheridan's whiskey and considered that, the waves and how they came and went, racking him with pain then leaving him for long enough that he'd think—but no. He was dying, he'd already decided that.

Dying on a ship, where the waves were bigger than the pain, bigger than the stone under his hip, than the grasses or the trees or the mountains. Waves like in that one picture-book that had been up at the school when he was small. Brightly painted, blue, curving things that clawed up at the gray skies above, and at the peak there'd been a boat. Tipping, tipping, looked like it was going to fall nose first, and now Luke was on that boat, caught in those waves in the picture-book up at the school. Boat, ship, maybe it was an ark. Couldn't tell, because it was plenty dark and another wave of pain washed over him, cold and sickening him to his bones. He was here with the pain and there on the boat all at once and in both places he was about to die. Swirled the last drops of whiskey in his flask, then swallowed it down to burn a hole in his stomach. Shoved the empty vessel away from him so it wouldn't go mocking him with its utter lack of liquor, and let himself drift.

Or churn, because the waves weren't gentle, they were violent and shook him side to side as much as they did forward to back. He was soaked to the skin by the icy spray coming off the ocean and he couldn't see for the needles of ice stinging into his eyes.

Rocking and reeling and he was about to fall off the deck, to sink to the bottom of the sea where the toothy things lived. Huge and slimy, legs and tentacles and giant eyes just staring at him without pity or remorse or even thought, because they were already dead and when they ate him, he would be, too.

"Babe," he might have mumbled, trying to bring the foolish youngster back to him, but it was pointless. He was lost in the sea or on it, and the boy was somewhere on land, safe.

Inside, had to get inside or he'd drown. Ships had insides, didn't they? They ought to if only he could figure out where, but his boots were slipping on the wet wood underneath them and he was shivering with the cold, couldn't trust his feet to walk or his hands to grip.

Whistle in the distance, sounded like a train but he couldn't figure out how a train could ride on waves or why it would go past a ship. All the same, the sound was there, got more persistent in his ears and then there was a spot of light in the distance and he didn't care how the train had gotten there so long as it kept coming. Which it must have been, the light got bigger and brighter, coming on fast. He waved his arms because he was afraid it would pass by too quickly for him to hop aboard. Pain and cold and he could not afford to miss this—

Doorway, the light was a doorway. Either ships had insides or the train had stopped or—he didn't care, there was a doorway, fuzzy yellow light gleaming from the other side and there was a trace of music. Banjo or guitar or fiddle, or all three at once, and voices. Lots of voices; there was a party somewhere, but more importantly there was that doorway and standing on the threshold, bathed in golden light, was Mary Kaye Porter. Slight body, no curvature to her belly, and she was young. Waving at him, beckoning him to her so he went. Cold, shaky legs that must have been filled with iron because he couldn't get them to go half the speed he wanted, couldn't run and he could barely make them walk, and there was so much pain.

"Babe," he called out again, though he meant to say _Mary Kaye_. Didn't matter, the girl still wanted him, still wiggling her fingers to get him to come closer but he stumbled. Tripped and figured he was about to get dumped in the sea except instead of sinking, he floated. Flew maybe; anyway, he could move without needing his legs. Aimed himself toward the glow, the opening where Mary Kaye stood, and then he was there. Right there and it wasn't Mary Kaye, it was Ruby.

Ruby, who hated him with a twinkle in her eye, hated him with her shiny teeth and her coal-colored hair. She hated him, but if he could get past her, through the door and closer to the light, it would be warm. So he ignored the hate, ignored the darkness of the way she looked at him, the way her teeth were sharp when she opened her mouth to laugh at him and her hair was snakes. Black ones writhing on her face, her shoulders and one went into her mouth that was open and cackling, still cackling. He stopped looking and flew or floated or walked past her to the inside.

No warmer, no closer to the light, but he was away from the sea that wanted to swallow him up, anyway. Mary Kaye-turned-Ruby was behind him now too, still laughing, but it was quieter or underwater or his ears had gotten clogged with mist. Everything down to an unending buzz, which was fine because he was in a room. Not the right room, the one he wanted had a fireplace in it and this one didn't. Had a rocking chair and a rug sitting right on the dirt floor, had glass windows because they reflected what little light there was. Had emptiness and near-silence and he didn't like it, so he went in search of where he wanted to be. Where there was a fire and light, where he'd be warm and there might be food.

Another door, or more of an archway this time, but passing through it led to yet one more wrong room. This one was blue and airy and if it wasn't lighted it also wasn't dark. He could recognize that it was pretty, but it wasn't what he wanted or where he was going. So he passed through it to the next, swung a door open and it was a kitchen. Mostly, anyway, it had a stove that wasn't lit, it had a table and chairs, and a huge old washtub in the corner. Luke headed for the tub like being drawn to a magnet, not because he wanted to wind up there, but because there was no place else he could go. Shining silvery metal without a lick of rust and though the room had been small when Luke first looked at it, that washtub sure was a long distance away. Took forever for him to make his way close enough to see two little boys sitting in there, taking a bath and playing with—something and he tried to get closer to see, but when he managed it wasn't a pair of scrawny tykes that he was looking at, just two scraps of cloth. One of them was solid blue and the other was more like gingham, deep blue and light and white in stripes and squares. Two pieces of cloth wrapped around each other for some sort of protectiveness and warmth, which reminded him that he was cold and in search of fire, so he moved on. Found another door, another room, whitewashed and stark. In the middle was a green strip of wood shaped like the organ in the church, except without the array of brass pipes around and over it. Useless, so he moved on.

It got darker, or that light that he figured was a fire got smaller. Further away which meant he'd been going in the wrong direction. Figured he ought to turn around, maybe make his way back to that kitchen and see if there were any cabinets in there. The sort that could hide liquor because he was fresh out. Knew he was fresh out, felt the desire for a drink shoot through him like pain and figured maybe there was some in that shiny metal tub, hiding under the cloth. If only he could get there.

But turning back wasn't as easy as it ought to have been. Couldn't figure out which way was forward and which was back, there were nooks and doors and places he couldn't be sure about, so he picked a direction that felt right and went in it. Found a corner to peek around and there was smoke. Or fog, didn't seem as sinister as smoke, didn't choke him and make him want to run. In fact, it turned into butterflies, the big orange ones that were everywhere in summer, with the veins of black, and then one flew by with the Blood Stained Banner in its wings but it was all gone so fast he couldn't make sense of it. Didn't try, just pressed on because there had to be fire or whiskey or both and he was determined to figure out where.

Kept moving, seemed like he was walking again; he could feel the drag of his legs, could sense the time ticking by and he wanted to be somewhere but couldn't get there. Finally, one more door. Splintering, though it had been whitewashed and pure once. Now it was fading and dirty like it had been grabbed by a thousand dusty hands over the course of years. Heavy, but it swung smoothly and he was in another kitchen. Dingy, gray, filth so heavily caked to the windows that it made the air look tarnished. Confining so he moved on to the next room and there was Daisy. Not Yellow-eye, but Daisy with the long hair of her youth, though her body was every bit grown up. Long and lean and he could see through her skirt and petticoat or she wasn't wearing any. Her leg was exposed right up the the thigh and it was sinewy, shapely. He didn't want to look, couldn't stop and then she was scolding him. Telling him to stop worrying about her, she could take care of herself. It was him that needed help, didn't he know? Couldn't he see? So he tore his eyes away from what he didn't want to be staring at anyway and looked down at his own body. Blood, that was the first thing he saw, but around that he seemed to be dressed in blue from head to toe, and though he shouldn't have been able to see the top of his own head, he knew he wasn't wearing a hat. Daisy had a point. He was a fool.

She shook her head at him, called off into the distance something about _Uncle Jesse, he's home_, and then she was gone.

All of it was gone, he was in the fields, his fields, the land that had been in his family for generations. There were fences and a barn, the trees were well tended and the grass was short. Somewhere, though he couldn't see them, there were crops that needed care, animals that needed feeding and any number of things he ought to be seeing to, but he'd been wandering around aimlessly all night. Never mind, it was a beautiful morning, full of sunshine that lit the sky but the warmth of it never quite reached where he was standing, still shivering.

A bang, out of nowhere. Louder than a gun and he wheeled to see the outhouse burning as though it had just been blasted away like the stone in the mines. Reeled in fear and then he was on the ground again, alone in the dark.

Except he had a brother. Coming toward him and he'd never been so happy to see Jud in all his life.

"Duke," his brother said, and he wanted to refuse the name, wanted to shout to his brother that they were better than the feud, that he'd been Luke all his life up until the moment he joined the Porter gang, and all he wanted was to go back to being Luke. To leave the feud behind, but Jud was pulling him into it with all his strength. "Duke," his brother said again, just kept right on marching toward him, or maybe it was more like running.

And there was something wrong with his brother. He ran with a lopsided lope, he was too tall, he was blonde. And he was kneeling down and taking Luke's head into his lap.

"Babe," he managed to mumble. The ships and trains and houses were gone, but it didn't matter, because in all of those places he'd been utterly alone. Here it was dark, he was cold, the pain he felt just about tore him apart from the inside out, but he had a brother.

"Bo," the man holding onto him corrected.

"Bo," he tried to answer, couldn't be sure whether the word made it past his lips or not, because by then the blackness engulfing his thoughts was too hard to hold back anymore, and he gave in to it.


	28. After the Thrill is Gone

**28. After the Thrill is Gone**

He could remember things. Better things in better places: the smell of bread cooking, the taste of lemonade on his tongue, the way Sunday afternoons were more fun than most because they didn't have to work. Just sat on a porch, theirs or someone else's, and watched the day pass in its slow and steady way. But he was nothing more than a boy then, letting time stretch out like taffy. Seeing how men farmed and women baked and it seemed a nice enough life, even if he didn't halfway understand it.

Then the war had blown across the land like a hot wind, taking the crops and the homes, the beauty of their simple lives along with it and whatever it was that he was meant to become got caught up in the storm. Hardly past his voice changing and there he was on a battlefield because back then everyone was. Young or old, didn't matter; there was a duty to protect the beautiful south from those who wanted to rape her for her bounty, and so he went. Didn't ever handle a gun well enough to be of much use as a fighter but he had a knack for gadgets. For small tools that accomplished big things, and he pulled his first musket ball from the leg of a soldier when he was no older than sixteen. Steady fingers that never shook and an innate sense of how deep to go after a bullet before all his efforts would make an injured man become a hemorrhaging man and then a dead man. From then on he was destined to fix what got broken.

But just because he was good at it didn't mean he had to like it.

Or just because he liked it didn't mean he really wanted the opportunity to do it. Because pushing forceps into flesh to dig out the foreign body stuck inside meant that one man had leveled a gun at another, then pulled the trigger. And Cooter would give up all his surgical skills in a heartbeat if people would just quit shooting each other.

Bo Sheridan banging on his door well after midnight, with blood on his clothes and stinking of whiskey, was just about the last thing he ever wanted to see. And the boy refusing to cross the threshold, to let Cooter take him in and care for him, to give him whatever medicine he needed as well as a bed for the night, well that made it even worse. But the hardest part to take might have been the boy's agitated state, the way he talked without making a lick of sense, arms gesturing and face a sweaty, flushed mess.

"We're gonna need Cletus," were the first words he could understand. "Hurry up!" And the boy turned like he was going to run back off into the night.

"Whoa," Cooter commanded.

The ladies of the town, like Missus Rhuebottom and Miz Tisdale, always told him he had the most charming smile, then pinched his cheek when he showed it to them. "Just like a little boy," he heard often enough and sometimes they meant his pudgy, dimpled face, but other times they were talking about his personality. His lifestyle, more like, with his utter lack of tidiness and the way he'd never settled down. The boys at the orphanage never complained when he came by to check on their health. After looking down sixteen throats, staring into thirty-two eyes and getting a gander at thirty-one ears (poor little Edward had been born with only one) he would take them out onto the soft grass of the grounds and challenge them to play a game of king of the mountain or red rover until they were all rolling around on the lawn together, holding their stomachs in fits of laughter. Though he had been an adult for longer than anyone liked to admit, Cooter was known as the town's most oversized little boy.

But he could be serious, too. He could say things in a tone that stopped everything and made people listen, and that was the way he spoke to Bo Sheridan right now.

"You just halt right there and tell me what's going on." His eyes, he'd been told, were what ruined the illusion of his youthfulness. Not always, but when he stared hard at something he was like a snake; he froze his prey right where it was. No one with a little boy's face and temperament was supposed to have eyes like that, the ladies would complain, but he figured that his eyes had seen enough that they had earned the right to be downright sinister when it suited them.

"I already told you," Bo said, frustration evident in his tone. "Duke's been shot. He's in some field not too far from the railroad tracks and he's in a bad way; he says he's dying."

Come to think of it, those words that he'd dismissed as gibberish at the beginning of this interaction had sounded an awful lot like that. Duke's been shot.

"Duke," Cooter repeated back at him. "You mean as in _the_ Duke? Cap Porter's favorite son, Duke?"

Though of course Duke wasn't related to Porter at all; he'd had his own family not that long ago. Cooter could remember him then, a skinny kid with the ropy muscles of a farmboy, those same blue eyes that frequently got called cold and steely staring up at him with anxious concern. Cooter had tended to the Duke boy's mother until her death, and had been the one to suggest that his little brother would heal from the buckshot wounds to his hind end, given time.

Once, and within relatively recent memory, Duke had been an earnest and gentle enough little boy. Now he was a legend, and not the good kind.

"You sure?" he asked, but Bo was perfectly confident that Duke was bleeding his final drops in some cornfield somewhere. "Babe," he said, then caught himself. It was just that the face looking into his was so innocent, so trusting. "Bo," and so worried that the boy hadn't bothered to correct him on the name, had waited for Cooter to figure it out himself. "You sure—it would be the perfect set up." A trap, and Cooter probably wasn't its intended victim. Any Hickory worth his salt ought to go get other Hickorys to witness the death of a high-ranking Porter. Would go find all his friends and bring them back to that same spot to get ambushed—

"Set up for what?" So very naïve. No, not that, the boy had lived enough of a life that he ought to be jaded by now. Such a good and honest soul that he couldn't imagine anyone would set a trap like that. "Cooter, he ain't in no position to hurt no one. He can't even stand up. And he ain't armed. If you ain't gonna come, at least lend me your wagon so's I can go and get him."

"I didn't say I wasn't coming." But he could see where Bo felt like he had. All that hesitation and effort to protect life and limb when the boy was ready to run right out there and save the world. Or just one soul in it. "Cletus!" he hollered. Seemed a shame to go waking the boy up that way; he heard the distant _what_ that was only half-formed before it got followed by the thump of a backside hitting the floor. Poor fool had been startled right out of the bed. "Get up, get down here and bring the gun." If they were going to go riding off into the middle of a trap, at least they were going to be armed.

Bo shook his head, either at the gun or the delay, Cooter couldn't tell. But the boy didn't lodge any verbal complaints, just went to hitch up the old, rickety wagon. Nothing more than a flat bed of wood with a bench seat at the front, but it was wide enough to carry three injured men (or just one, if Cooter had to try to perform some manner of surgery even as Cletus wheeled them from one side of town to the other).

No more than a half an hour later, though the way he was leaning forward and urging the horses to ridiculous speeds indicated that Bo felt it took a lot longer, they were crashing though hip high weeds at the edge of what had once been the Duke farmstead.

"Whoa," Cooter commanded. The horses listened to him, though it was Bo at the reins, trying to urge them to continue forward. "Bo, whoa," he repeated because the boy wasn't letting up, even if the horses were slowing.

"Cooter, he's still a ways up, dang it!"

"He's here?"

"Well, there," Bo clarified, pointing off slightly to the north. "Not far."

"Bo," Cooter whispered, "this really could be a set up. This is a dangerous place. We got to go in cautious." Cletus, behind them in the bed of the wagon with what amounted to no more than a squirrel gun clenched in his nervous hands, moaned a little at that news.

Bo didn't waste any time with complaints. "Do what you got to, Cooter," and then he hopped down and ran off in the direction where he'd pointed only a few seconds ago.

"Ya dang fool," Cooter mumbled as he urged the horses to a slow amble after Bo. "You just keep your eyes out back there," he said to Cletus.

"You betcha. My eyes are out," was slightly comforting until it got followed by, "they're closed, but they're out." Which didn't make any sense at all but did make Cooter let out a nervous chuckle despite himself.

By the time they made it safely across the field, hearing nothing but the sound of weeds getting crushed under wooden wheels alternating with the clatter of Cooter's knees knocking together, Bo was sitting on the ground with the Duke boy's head in his lap. From there Cooter's doctoring instincts came to the forefront, making him just about forget his perfectly reasonable fear of death. Couldn't remember stopping the wagon or grabbing his bag and hopping out, but there he was in the dirt next to Bo, trying to get a good look at the damage done to the Duke boy.

"Move," he told the boy to his right, who was fussing uselessly and patting Duke's head like he was a puppy.

"He was mumbling stuff," Bo said as some means to explain why he was soothing an unconscious man.

"Well he's out now. Cletus!" Took two tries and more words than he wanted to waste, but his assistant brought him the long board that they used to lift injured men into the wagon when those men couldn't lift themselves. And found himself half cursing under his breath after a bleeding Duke had been rolled onto the board and the three of them lifted him. Boy was dense with muscle and weighed too dang much.

"Cletus," he instructed, "you drive. Bo, I reckon it would be best if you just disappeared now. Them Hickorys wouldn't be none too happy to learn that you helped this boy. You go on and don't breathe a word about what you done, and I won't neither."

"Nope," the boy insisted. "Hold on," he said and took about three long strides into the weeds. Picked up a jug of something then hopped back into the wagon. "Cletus," he said, handing the jug over to the bumbling assistant, "you get back there and help Cooter. I'm driving."

"Bo," he tried to reason, but there was no use.

"Now, that-there is red eye whiskey to sterilize whatever you got to sterilize. I'm driving and I'll hold her as steady as I can. And no," the boy pointed out, sparing a second to turn around and look at the bed of the wagon where Cletus was joining him in huddling over the Duke boy. "I ain't going nowhere. Whatever happens to Duke there," he jerked his thumb backward in a crude point at the prone boy, then urged the horses to turn the wagon in a tight little half circle to head them back the way they'd come. "Him and me are in it together."

Oh, the boy was a fool.


	29. The Long Run

**29. The Long Run**

Fuzzy, golden around the edges. Bright, too bright, and he closed his eyes against it. Wanted to throw his coat over his face, but he couldn't move at first and when he finally managed it there was a wash of pain that turned everything red anyway.

"Easy now," came the voice. "Cooter," got said quietly, then "Cooter!" with a little more urgency. Like you'd do if you wanted to wake a sleeping man, and he figured the voice ought to shut up now. Because apparently there were two sleeping men here that wanted to stay that way. "He's coming to."

No, he most certainly was not. He was going to lay right where he was and close his eyes as hard as he could, because there was something there under the grogginess, under the exhaustion and the hours that he must have been out of it—something he wouldn't be able to ignore, once he was fully awake. Something he didn't want to think about. He tried again to reach for his coat or a blanket or anything to throw over his eyes and suck him back into that forgetful darkness. Didn't work; he heard himself moan in pain.

"Babe," he mumbled, because it was coming clear now. That brat Babe Sheridan refusing to shoot him.

"Bo," he got corrected, and remembered that, too.

Figured he must be closer to still dreaming than he actually thought, because he knew Babe had left him with hardly more than a sip of whiskey. But it had been dark then, safe in its own warped way, on the soil of his own land. Now he was—somewhere else, couldn't smell the grass and that stone that had been under his hip was gone. It was bright here, quiet. Inside, and even if he hadn't done farm chores in years, he knew that it was too late to get to them. Well past dawn, maybe even past noon. He didn't have to open his eyes to know that much, he could feel it in his soul.

"Shove over," he heard, knew the voice. Damn it all, that Sheridan kid had been as good as his word. He'd fetched the doc instead of running off into the woods to fetch a firing squad.

"I told you to shoot me," he complained, still refusing to open his eyes.

"Well, buddy, all I got is that squirrel gun I keep hanging over the door," Doc Cooter was telling him. "And it'd just put another slug of lead into you that I'd have to pull out. Be an awful waste of time when I already spent the better part of the night getting the one slug out of you. You want to get around to opening your eyes and I'll show you what I done took out of your shoulder."

One eye only and that one just a crack. He wasn't fully willing to be awake yet, or to admit that he was actually rather glad that no one had seen fit to kill him like he kept asking them to.

"You ain't took no bones out, did you?" he queried, full of skepticism.

"No, sir, you're pretty lucky. I didn't have to take out no part of you at all. Just this." The doc was waving something small and dark in front of Luke's face. Would have taken both eyes to see it clearly; Luke wasn't willing to invest that much. "I done a fine job of keeping you alive, boy." Pride, but Doc Cooter was known to be mighty good at what he did, so he reckoned the man had earned it. "But you're pretty tore up. Best you stay still and don't go undoing all that fine work I done."

"All right," he agreed, closing that eye again. But it wasn't enough, of course it wasn't.

"You should have seen him, Duke! Why, Cooter here's a real medical genius!"

It would have been too much to ask that Doc Cooter was real, but the Sheridan boy was just a figment of his imagination. Nope, they both had to be as real and as loud as the day was long. "I reckon it's just as well I didn't see it." Hard to imagine he'd been unconscious through it, but he reckoned that was for the best. Unconsciousness was much easier than being awake.

"I reckon it is, too," Cooter concurred. "You ain't exactly no lightweight and my best fighting days are behind me."

Luke mustered a chuckle at that, opened his eyes enough to take a look around himself. Small room, one window that probably faced east with all that sunshine pouring in. There were heavy drapes pulled back away from it and he half wanted to ask the Doc to close them. Then leave him to sleep, but he figured he could take a minute to look around first. Not that there was much of anything to see. A bed with white blankets that he was tucked into, a small table with a sweating pitcher sitting on it, full of something that had once been cool. (Must be hot in here, too, but he still felt cold to his core.) Two men, one a seasoned and calm doctor, the other a grinning blonde dunce.

"Babe," he said.

"Bo," was getting a little more insistent every time it got said.

"Bo," he agreed, tried to wave his hand in the air as some sort of a peace-keeping gesture, but the small movement made his vision fill up with red spots and another one of those moans came out of his mouth.

"Now, boy, you just stop that. You be still and don't move that hand for nothing. You still got a hole in your shoulder that's got to set and heal," Doc Cooter scolded. "You take it easy. No fancy moves."

Yeah, he could agree that that—no fancy moves. Problem was more along the lines of regular moves. It was his right arm that was injured and he never had been able to use his left for much of anything at all.

"Bo," he went back to saying when his voice would come out as anything other than a whimper. "Ain't you got places you'd better be?"

Funny how the youngster looked away from him then, how he blinked a couple of times and quit that giddy grinning he'd been doing. Almost like he was a sad little boy and just maybe that fit. Maybe the fool didn't belong in the feud anyway.

"Doc Cooter's a friend," the boy settled on. "I reckon I'll stay here with him."

The doctor smiled at that. "That's right, with an ornery patient like you I'm gonna need all the help I can get. Now, you done lost a lot of blood and you need to eat something hearty. You hungry? Bo here can whip up—"

He groaned, didn't mean to, but he sure wasn't ready to hear what manner of food the boy could whip up. Whatever it was, he didn't want any of it.

The doc didn't like that. "You ain't hungry at all?"

Luke shook his head, and the doc pressed the back of his hand against one of his cheeks then the other, his forehead and his temple. "Don't you go getting no fever now," he scolded. "You ain't got to eat right now, but I expect you to have something by sundown. Bo, get him some water."

The sweaty pitcher got lifted, its contents poured into a metal cup that was rusty and dinged up enough that it might have been left over from the war. Bo brought it over to him, hesitated there as he considered handing it over. Luke lifted his left hand, but there was no way the boy in front of him was going to give him the cup.

"You might hurt yourself," he explained. Luke laughed at the notion of hurting himself while drinking water, but Bo Sheridan, he was very serious about this, very serious about helping Cooter, which meant not letting Luke move at all. (And eventually Luke'd get around to resenting that. Like whenever he got past the point where trying to use his right arm made him sick to his stomach and nearly blind with the pain.) So the blonde fool walked around the bed to Luke's left side, then perched himself carefully on the edge of it. Placed his right hand behind Luke's head to support and lift it slightly, then held the cup to his lips. And if Luke hadn't been so damn thirsty, if the water hadn't felt so good on his parched and cracked lips, if he'd had any strength at all, he would have smacked the boy for babying him. Another thing he'd get around to. Later, after he'd recuperated a bit.

"You said I need sleep?" he asked the doctor when he'd had his fill of drinking, and the Sheridan boy had set the cup aside.

"Lots of it," Cooter agreed.

"Then pull them drapes and let me do it." And the two annoying men set about to comply, Bo returning to him with no more than a thimbleful of whiskey.

"To help you sleep," he said. "And for the pain." And just maybe to keep him sedated enough to be halfway agreeable.

"All right," he said when all the preparation was done. "I'm going to sleep now. Y'all just leave me be." That got him a raised eyebrow from the doc, who might not have been used to taking orders from the likes of a Porter Lieutenant.

"You're going to eat later," Cooter reminded him.

Luke closed his eyes and set to ignoring everything around him. Mostly, anyway; he still had ears and they heard things even if he didn't want them to. Could pick out the doctor mumbling low about impossible patients and how they ought to be more grateful for his skills, could hear the rustle of clothing as that fool Sheridan boy shrugged or moved or whatever it was he was doing instead of going back to where he belonged. Not that Luke thought the Hickory camp was a terrific place to be or anything, but the longer the fool stayed away, the more suspicion would be raised and the greater risk he'd be at. It was for his own good that the boy ought to move on.

But when he heard the door close, Luke couldn't shake the feeling that Bo was still on this side of it with him.


	30. Learn To Be Still

**30. Learn To Be Still**

"Babe," the voice croaked from the other side of the room. "Water," came the request. He'd opened the drapes again a while back, then the window when it got hot as the afternoon passed. Not that the Duke boy seemed to know it was hot, huddled under a blanket and shivering. He had sweat on his brow, though, so maybe his body had figured out what his brain didn't know. The air was sticky and sweaty and yeah, Duke was probably right about water being a good idea.

"Ain't I told you enough times yet," he said when he sat on the edge of the bed with Cooter's old tin cup full of water in his hand. Funny how those blue eyes didn't get rolled at him this time when he lifted Duke's head to offer him a sip. The poor man must've been desperately thirsty. "That it's Bo?"

The Duke boy tried to look repentant, but there was water right in front of him and he really wanted some. So Bo didn't push him right then, just let him have what he figured he needed, held it for him and felt how there was no resistance.

"Bo," he said when he was done drinking. "Thanks."

Well now, that was better. Bo took the now empty cup over to the table, set it next to the pitcher, then went back to the hard-backed chair he'd been sitting in when Duke had so rudely called him by the wrong name. Sat and waited for the steady, even breaths of a sleeping man, but they didn't come.

"You been sitting there all along?" It was grumbled, the sound of a man whose throat was sore. Cooter was worried about fever and infection, and Bo figured Duke sounded sick every bit as much as injured.

"Mostly," he answered. "Before he left to go out on rounds, me and Cooter did put together a stew. You reckon you could eat?" He got a sour face for that, chose to see it as encouragement. After all, it wasn't a flat out no. "If'n you was to eat some now, when Cooter got back I could tell him you was already fed. Might keep him from shoving food down your gullet." Which was what the doctor had announced himself perfectly willing to do. "If you got any interest."

"Thanks," Duke said again.

Which was how he found himself sitting at the foot of the bed, spooning food into the other man's mouth like Lavinia used to do for him when he was sick. Of course, he'd been nothing more than a cranky little boy at the time; Duke was a man. But he didn't fight him and didn't even try to move that right arm. Must have hurt something fierce.

"More water?" he offered and Duke took some of that too before laying back and signaling – with just the tiniest movement of his left hand, of course – that he was through. "I reckon that's enough to suit old Cooter anyways," he decided, even though the prone man had only eaten about half of what Bo had scooped out for him. No matter; Bo set to eating the rest himself.

"Why're you still here?" asked the rude man that he'd just spent all that time feeding.

He sorted through the possible answers to that, and there were many. All true enough, but he settled on, "Because there ain't no place else I got to be."

"Well, you ain't got to be here." He felt his eyes squint down, bit his cheek against the petulant words that wanted to pop out. "I mean," Duke must've seen the change in him too. "If I needed 'round the clock nursing, Doc Davenport would have Cletus in here, and I ain't gonna die or nothing. Not unless you go and tell your Hickory friends where I am, that is."

"Duke," he snapped; shouldn't be angry but he was. The man over there in that bed knew him to be from the enemy camp and that was about all he knew about him. Other than that Bo hadn't shot him when he asked him to, and if he hadn't shot him then why would he—

Left hand up, not much, just enough to ask him to hold his horses. Or maybe not to talk so loud around the sick and injured. "I reckon you might as well call me Luke," he offered. "Being as you done seen me drunk and shot and otherwise incapacitated. Heck, you seen my naked shoulder, which is more than half them prostitutes at Miss Mabel's have ever seen. I reckon that makes us old friends."

Bo smiled at that, figured maybe he shouldn't, maybe it was sarcasm. But he liked the sound of that, old friends, when he didn't have too many of those. Doc Cooter, Pastor Jesse, Miss Lavinia if she were still alive, and it was really hard to call someone a friend when they were that much older than you. Besides, none of those three ever really wanted to talk about Miss Mabel's girls. Not the way Luke would.

"What're they like, them girls?" Bo asked, frowned at himself for sounding like a desperate little schoolboy. "I mean, Miss Mabel, she halfway raised me, so she won't let me get near them. Or she won't let them get near me and it works out the same either way."

He got a smirk for that. "To tell the truth, I only really been with Ruby, so I ain't no expert." Which—the man had no real reason to lie, but it was unbelievable all the same. The notorious Duke hadn't made his way through all the prostitutes before choosing the best of the bunch? "But they're just girls, you know. Like other girls, they want you to love them or whatever. To marry them, or something. Have a family with a house and a yard with a little fence around it."

Well, what was so wrong with that? Just because Bo didn't want it for himself didn't mean it wasn't something worth having. Not that Luke had said that it wasn't, but something in his tone was dismissive. Of all dreams or just that one, Bo couldn't tell.

"Well anyways, Luke, I ain't got no plans on telling anyone where you are."

"All right," the injured man agreed. So confident, so sure of himself. Like even if Bo did go running off to Ol' Nut Hickory right now and announce that the notorious Duke was incapacitated in the doc's infirmary, there'd be nothing for him to be afraid of. "How did you come to feuding anyway?" _Because you're too young; everybody says so. And get rid of the mustache, too._

But Luke's countenance didn't really say all those things. He was quiet, thoughtful. Curious.

"I don't know," Bo confessed. "I just, I met this fellow. We was working, unloading the train. One of them day-long jobs that you get if you happen to be in the right place at the right time." Which was standing down by the tracks, looking strong and hungry. Most days you could stand there forever and not get offered work, but sometimes a burly, grease-stained man would come down the line and pull a couple of good-sized guys out to unload the cargo. Didn't pay much, but it could get a fellow a few good meals of either the solid or liquid variety. Duke nodded, seemed like he knew the same tricks of being a day laborer. "Anyways, we struck up a conversation and he seemed," nice, he almost said, but that wasn't it. Leadbelly had never been nice. He'd just seemed confident, smart. Like he knew things that Bo didn't. And he didn't tell Bo to mind his own business, so at least he wasn't _un_friendly. "To like me okay. And he was a Hickory. He brought me in."

Things got quiet for a minute, which left Bo with too much time and space for thinking. For worrying at his fingers, looking to see whether he really had managed to wash all of Duke's blood out from under his nails. When he lifted his gaze again, Duke was still looking at him. Or through him; with eyes like that you couldn't be too sure.

"You, uh, you in pain?" because the intensity was too much for him. Duke's look or his own thoughts or—"I could go upstairs and get Cletus. He's resting," since they'd all been up the entire night, him and Cletus holding Duke down while Doc Cooter used forceps to get the bullet out of him, then staying and watching him involuntarily shudder as the doc cleansed, sewed and bandaged the wound. "But he said to wake him up if you needed anything while Doc Cooter was gone."

Quiet shake of the head, two fingers of the left hand lifted in silent decline of his offer.

"So, uh, Duke." Bo hadn't ever been terribly good at sitting still. Miss Lavinia used to say he was her squirmy-bug and while he hadn't cared for being called that any more than he'd liked Babe, he had to admit that he was prone to wriggling and otherwise keeping active. "Is that like, your nickname? You royalty or something? Or—" he just left it lie there, let the silence drag on because there were words he wasn't willing to say, things he wasn't ready to admit to wanting or hoping for, but it was there anyway. In his heart and under his skin, like white hot bolts of lightning just looking for a fissure through which to escape.

"It's my family name," Luke finally said.

Because Bo might not have been the most patient child or the one who sat still for lessons, but he was smart enough and his memory worked fine. He could hear old Pastor Jesse's words in his head. _You could pass for old Jedediah. Jedediah was my cousin. And both of us had the same last name: Duke._

"Your family name. What, uh, who all is in your family?" What were all those names Jesse told him? Albert and Eli and of course there was Isaac; he was supposed to be Isaac's son. But there were others and Bo had been so busy being frustrated by the old-timer's tale telling that he hadn't stopped to memorize them all. Still, he was fairly sure he'd recognize a name if Luke mentioned it.

And that look he'd been favored with, the one that was curiosity or skepticism of whatever it had been, was fading. Lines were coming into the other man's face, looking just as resolute as he had last night when he was asking Bo to shoot him. In pain and doing everything possible to ignore it.

"I ain't got no family no more. They all passed years ago."

"Oh." It was, he knew, a stupid response. You were supposed to say how sorrowful you were to hear such a thing, to follow it with words about blessings and the Lord's will but saying those things to Luke right now would be like talking to a stone wall. He'd listen just about as well and have exactly as much give. "I know what that's like," he tried, knew it sounded even worse than nothing at all. "I'm an orphan too."

"Everybody knows you was an orphan, Babe. The whole town knows it and thinks you're just the most adorable thing for it. Me, I ain't no orphan, I just don't have folks no more. Got me a cousin, used to see her sometimes when I was a kid. But her pa and mine didn't see eye-to-eye, so I ain't got no family no more." And that, _Babe_ Sheridan, is that.

"Well, I mean, I don't mean to pry, but," could a man survive when his heart was beating this fast and hard? Maybe the doc ought to be here now to check on _him_. But he wasn't, so Bo pressed on. "It's just that pastor Jesse said I looked like I could be one of the Dukes so I was just wondering if maybe—" _we could be kin._

Hard set to the other man's face. "What was it Doc Cooter said? That I had to eat and to rest? Well I already ate and I reckon unless you stop talking your blame head off, there ain't going to be no chance for me to rest." He could see how Duke commanded his men now. He might have been younger than half of them, but when he spoke like that, all coldness and command, there was no room for argument or alternate opinions.

"Yes, sir," came out automatically.

A sigh from over there on the bed. "Look, I'm going to get some sleep. Best you go off now and do whatever it is you want with your life. It ain't doing you no good to sit here and watch me heal." Blue eyes closed; discussion over.

For now.


	31. Lyin' Eyes

**31. Lyin' Eyes**

There were things for which he ought to be grateful.

Like the whiskey that Doc Cooter had given him after checking on him last night. _For the pain and to help you sleep_, the doc had said. And then with a wink, _don't you go enjoying this none_. As if the doc knew all about enjoying whiskey, and maybe he did. He had that look about him, anyway.

Or the pain that reminded him that he still had his arm. Plenty of old-timers had come back from the war having left some part of themselves behind on the battlefield. Like Old Man Rheubottom, who ran the General Store. Ran, that was, while sitting, because his left leg had gotten replaced by a peg some thirty years back. And some days, when the stump that was left got to aching too much, the oldster would take that peg off, and there'd be nothing but empty space where it belonged. But Luke wouldn't be walking around with a sleeve that had no arm in it - Doc had saved his, and he knew this for a fact because he could feel the pain in it. (Of course, Mr. Rheubottom sometimes complained of an ache where his leg used to be, so maybe the pain wasn't enough. Luke flexed his fingers. Not much, just enough to feel the blanket he was supposed to be sleeping under get caught up in his palm.)

He ought to be grateful for the soft bed instead of the hard ground, he ought to be grateful that Doc Cooter had the space for him, ought to be glad to hear that Emery Potter had recently vacated this very bed to go to his married sister's house and recuperate. Ought to be grateful for the food he had been given and the kind care. Ought to be grateful that Babe Sheridan saw fit to save his sorry carcass instead of leaving him there to die.

And well, maybe he was, somewhere within himself, appropriately thankful for what had been done for him so far, but that did not mean he was willing to open his eyes. Because he knew, sure as if there had been a rooster crowing, that it was morning again. And he could feel, just as intensely as the pain in his shoulder, that he was not alone.

"Bo." He had to stop himself from calling the kid _Babe_. Just because he was still young enough to have romantic notions of finding his long lost family, and just because he'd pinned his hopes on Luke, didn't mean he was a child. Just a fool, and a generous fool at that. One who had offered him respite when he'd begged for death. "Sheridan. You been here all night?"

It was only half scolding. He'd told the boy to go away and in that moment he'd meant it, but that didn't mean he'd feel that way forever. In fact, now that his head hurt less and the cold that had seeped so deeply into him that it made his bones shiver seemed to have passed, he was kind of all right with having company. As long as he didn't get asked about his family again.

"Nah," Bo answered; the look on his young, unscarred (but for a mustache that looked like it was a burden to carry around all by itself) face was sheepish. "I left for a while when you was out. I just wanted to walk for a spell."

"Hey, you ain't got to—"

"—I came back, didn't I? So it don't matter what I got to do or not do. I just figured you ought to know. Because I walked around town a little bit. Saw what it looks like and it's strange. There's Hickorys everywhere, but no Porters. I reckon them Hickorys figure you're dead. Elsewise they wouldn't be so brazen."

It made Luke smile, probably not for the reasons Bo thought. Sure, it was convenient to be presumed dead. Gave a man time to heal and some amount of leverage once he did. But the main thing was that the Hickorys had done exactly what they'd agreed to, taking over the town. Meanwhile Luke's boys were laying low, even though they had never quite gotten the instruction from him to do so. Good old Yellow-eye.

"I also figure you ought to know that I talked to some people. They're saying it was Leadbelly who shot you."

He just about tore himself open all over again laughing at that.

"Luke!" But by then he was coughing instead, left hand gripping across his body and trying to calm himself back down, even before the Sheridan boy could get to his side. Offering him water that he didn't really need, but he drank some anyway.

"Ledbetter," he corrected when he could breathe again. "That ain't news." Though apparently it had been to Bo. Maybe it hadn't seemed important before, maybe it hadn't mattered who had shot him when all he wanted was to die so the pain would stop. Maybe he just hadn't gotten around to saying it yet. "I always knew it was Ledbetter. He wasn't shy about taking credit right then when I was lying on my back, bleeding into the ground. Of course, he didn't say a word until he figured I was just about dead anyway. He ain't precisely the bravest guy ever to walk the streets of Dade."

"Well, I didn't know it was him. And I didn't know he was going to do it either, I promise," Bo said, raising his hand in the air. Standing there right next to his bed and swearing some sort of oath that Luke had never asked of him. "He was—" the blonde paused there, let his hand fall to slap his own thigh, sighed. "It was him that brought me into the Hickory gang. I figured he was my friend." The boy walked back to his chair and sat. More like deflated. "I'm sorry," he added.

"Bo," he said, had to stop himself from laughing again. The last thing he needed now that he was finally starting to feel better was for Doc Cooter to come in and start poking at his wound. Or worse, to cut off the whiskey supply, since he would clearly appear to be enjoying it instead of letting it keep him calm and sedated. "It's a feud. We's on opposite sides. I reckon shooting me is Ledbetter's job. It ain't nothing you got to apologize for."

"I suppose." But the boy wasn't consoled at all. "It just don't seem very sporting to sneak up on a man when he's alone like that. And when he ain't expecting it." But the rules of feuds and wars were changing. Instead of giving men a fair chance to make amends, sneak attacks were becoming ever more popular. Heck, Luke had been ordered into performing one himself.

"Well, old Ernst there never was much of a sportsman," Luke allowed. "I've known him a lot longer than you, and he never was what you'd call honorable."

"Yeah, well, maybe not. I guess I never thought about it before." Of course he hadn't. Didn't take anything at all to see that the poor fool trusted the world far too completely. Expected good to come out of bad, and what could you do about someone like that? Nothing. Nothing at all. "But there's this other thing I got to tell you." A pause, lips getting licked and Luke figured that whatever was coming next was going to be painful. "Ruby's the one who told him where to look for you. Seems like he done stole her from you. He's been bragging about that, too. At least that's what Chastity says." Ah, well. Leave it to one lady of the evening to reveal the sordid story of another.

"I reckon Ruby's free to take up with whoever she wants," Luke explained. Funny how he felt like he was comforting Bo, who looked so broken-hearted that Luke's girl had betrayed him. "I done told her to get lost." He hadn't told her to get with Ledbetter and plot to kill him, but he figured she'd done what felt best to her at the time. He didn't really hold any grudges against her for that.

"Don't give her no right to set you up like that." Bo was indignant. It was something to see. Chin up, nostrils flaring and eyes just a little too sparkly.

He would make a placating gesture, if only he could stand to move his arm. Since he couldn't he just smiled instead at the loyalty of a boy who was supposed to be on the other side of this thing, after all.

"Bo," he said, wished he hadn't. Because now that he'd started, he figured he was going to have to finish. Even if it wasn't fair to get the boy's hopes up like this. "I don't reckon there's much of a chance that you and me is related. First of all, old Jesse done drunk up half his smarts years ago. Second of all, Duke ain't that uncommon a name. Third of all," but there really wasn't a third objection. Other than that he wasn't sure he was in possession of all his faculties at the moment and he might come to regret this later. "It just ain't likely, but if you really want to know anything about us Dukes, you got to ask Yellow-eye."

"Yellow-eye?"

"Her pa is the one that kept the old family bible. She'd have to go see him of course, but—"

"_She?_"

Oh, the poor boy had it bad. He'd heard all the stories of the notorious Duke and his mysterious scout. The rumors flew from one end of town to the other about what made Yellow-eye so good, from the notion of Cherokee brave to half-wolf. But no one, not anyone in the whole region except him, knew that the real secret was that she was female. And a Duke.

And maybe Cooter ought to wean him off the whiskey. Or give him more of it, enough to truly kill the pain in his shoulder, because when it came right down to it he figured that had a greater bearing on the fool things he'd decided to do. A man who hurt was a man who couldn't think straight.

"Bo," he plunged forward, since it was too late to backpedal. "Yellow-eye is that cousin I told you about last night. Her real name is Daisy Duke. Now you go telling anybody that and I'm going to be forced to kill you." One armed and in so much pain he probably wouldn't manage to stay upright for more than the second it took to fire off a shot, but if Bo went and put Daisy at risk, he'd have to find a way to kill him. "You got that?"

You would think the boy had never spent a day in the feud, had never considered his own mortality before, the way he looked after those words. Scared and shocked, a little bit like he wanted to offer Luke a fight for impugning his honor. Awed, and in the end he nodded.

"I ain't got no plans on seeing her hurt. What are you thinking, letting her be in the feud like that? A woman!" Oh, the scandal of such a thing.

Luke laughed, quietly because he didn't want to hurt anymore. "Saying I let her be in the feud is like saying I let it rain last Thursday. Daisy's got a mind of her own." Bo's face expressed the dubious nature of this statement. Just wait until he tried to tell her what to do, even once. He'd see then. "She's a force of nature all by herself. Besides," he had his male pride after all. "I make sure she's protected. I don't never put her in danger."

Except, of course, right now. When she must have been frantic with worry for him. Rumors making their rounds and she hadn't seen him in what—two days now? She'd be ready to send in the cavalry, if she had the means. Bo wanting to get a peek into the family bible, well that was a fine excuse to send him to her with a message. About where Luke was, his condition and that she should just lay low for a week. The governor would come and go and surely he'd be on his feet again after that.

"You, on the other hand, had best be careful how you approach her. The girl has some deadly aim, and when she sees that blonde head of yours," because it was a fairly recognizable mop of curls, six-foot and change high in the air, and everyone knew Babe Sheridan was a Hickory, "she's likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Where's my pants?"

He got a pair of raised eyebrows for that, asking him what he needed with pants when he couldn't even laugh without hurting himself. "What do you want pants for?"

"Just bring them to me. Or, no you ain't even got to do that much, just go get them."

Bo shrugged, left the room. Luke stared at the patterns of light and dark on the ceiling where the late morning sun reflected and listened to the bang and fumble going on in the next room. Finally the door opened up again and there was Bo, holding a pair of breeches between his thumb and forefinger, keeping them a safe distance from his body. Luke could respect that; they looked like they'd been taken off a dead man, one that had bled out every drop of blood in his body.

"Cooter planned on burning them. You're lucky he ain't too quick when it comes to cleaning up or they'd be gone."

"What about my hat, he get rid of that, too?"

"Nope," Bo announced, grabbing it from off the bedpost above Luke's head. A little snicker for how the notoriously brilliant Duke hadn't noticed a thing that was so close that if it'd had teeth it would have bitten him, but Luke just hadn't gotten around to looking in that direction yet.

"All right, you reach into the right hand pocket in them breeches. You're looking for a white handkerchief." That had apparently gotten stained with blood on half of it. Oh well, there wasn't much to be done about that now. "You wear that hat, so she don't get spooked right away. And you give her that handkerchief, first thing. You tell her I gave it to you, and I told you that it was our grandpa Jedediah's." Funny look across Bo's face, then he started studying the handkerchief like it had some meaning hidden in the fibers. It didn't really, just had small stitched-in initials on one corner, _JD_. "You tell her that my pa's mule's name was Maudine and that I told you Daisy used to call her Maw-Maw. That ought to be enough to keep you from getting killed." He hoped. The girl wouldn't be any too patient with anyone who looked like they might have had anything to do with hurting Luke. He'd write her a note, but his right arm was pretty well immobilized and besides, talking got information across faster than writing anyway. "You got all that?"

"Jedediah Duke," sounded almost reverent the way Bo said it. "Maudine the mule that Yello—_Daisy_ used to call Maw-Maw."

"Right. Now what day is it?"

Another funny look, like where his pants were and what day of the week it was were crazy things for him to want to know. "Tuesday," Bo humored him all the same.

"All right, you'll find her up at the old schoolhouse on Wildflower Hill," at least as long as she was keeping to the plan they'd laid out long ago. If they ever got separated, they'd look to meet up at one spot or another, after the sun had gone down but before the Dog Star rose, depending on the day of the week. "You approach from the south, you wave that handkerchief in front of you like a flag of surrender, and with any luck, she'll let you live long enough to explain what you want. You tell her I been hurt, but I'm alive and getting better. You tell her where I am and then you tell her no matter what she does, not to come here." The last thing he needed was anyone following her to the doc's. "You tell her that I want her to go up to her parents' house first thing, to ask if you could be related. Tell her whatever Jesse told you about that." _He's crazy_, Luke wanted to add, and _don't get your hopes up_. But he'd already said as much. Besides, sending Daisy off on this wild goose chase was probably the best thing for her. It'd get her away from the feud for a day or two, and she'd go up there knowing he was going to be fine. By the time she got back, maybe he'd be in good enough shape to let her see him. "And don't tell her who shot me, neither." Because she'd go after Ernst Ledbetter like a fox after a rabbit, wouldn't be satisfied until she'd torn him to shreds. And then she'd be haunted by what she'd done for the rest of her life, and Luke figured that was more than he wanted to make her live with.

"All right," Bo agreed to all of it.

"You meet her after dark, and don't you let nobody follow you." A solid nod for that, his blood-stained breeches getting dropped across the footboard of the bed, then Bo putting Luke's dark hat onto his head. Too big for him; it fell down over his eyes and he had to push it back up to look at Luke again. "And Bo," Luke added, holding back yet another laugh as the boy struggled to get the hat properly situated on his head. "If you was to be back here keeping me company come tomorrow morning when I wake up, I reckon I wouldn't mind."


	32. On the Border

**32. On the Border**

Don't let her shoot you, Luke had told him. There'd been no warnings about him getting laughed at.

"Why, Babe Sheridan." It was a good thing, he figured, that he had never come face-to-face with the infamous Yellow-eye before tonight. Because sure, the voice was lowered, the clothing was knickers and shirt covered by an overcoat, all of it loose-fitting. In the bright moonlight he could see that the hair was shorn and the stance unfeminine, but there was no mistaking, not for him, that the person in front of him was female. Bo Sheridan knew girls when he saw them. "Did you really think that ridiculous hat would fool me into thinking you was someone else?" The laughter, even if nothing else had, gave her away. Light, airy, and he wondered how all those fools who fought next to her could think she was a boy. Then again, she did have a gun, and he knew for a fact she could use it. That alone could have fooled some of them. "The handkerchief is a nice touch though." Hands on hips, and he figured folks had to be half-blind to think she was a he. "But put it away and take off the dang hat." Standing up on the steps of the schoolhouse and that, at least, made her look tall. Of course, it helped her cause a little bit that her laughter had stopped him a good fifty feet away so he was downhill from her, too.

The school wasn't much, just clapboard and latticework. Small, had to be confining on the inside. A tight-fitting space into which kids squeezed, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on hard benches. Cold winds blowing through gaps in the boards come winter, brutally hot in spring and fall, and Bo yearned for it. For a childhood that included long walks over stony paths, under canopies of trees with burrs stuck to his shoes and the hem of his breeches, just to come to this place. There was nothing wrong with the schoolroom in the orphanage, he supposed. It was full of donated books with pages torn out by previous residents, it had high windows and smelled of cedar, just like the rest of the building. He'd sat there, day in and day out, while volunteer ladies taught all the orphans their letters and numbers. And then they'd been sent off to chores and it was fine. There was nothing wrong with it.

But this building, with all the paths converging here from town, from the farms, from the hills to the east, with the grassy field that became hardpan dirt close to the door, it spoke of fun. Of children greeting each other loudly each morning, grumbling as the classroom was called to order, of running out the door the minute class was dismissed. Tin pail lunches packed by mothers, stickball games, climbing trees and watching the bumblebees fly by – all the mysteries of the childhood he'd always wished for and never had.

"It don't even fit you." What? Oh, the hat that Yellow-eye was so eager for him to remove. Right.

"Of course it don't," he said, taking a few strides closer. "It's Luke's."

Well. That got her hackles up. It also got a gun pointed at him faster than lightning.

Hands up, backtracking. "Maw-Maw," he explained. "Maw-Maw!" Which didn't do a lot for his current situation, and he realized with distinct horror that this must be what it was like to be Rosco. To have your tongue wrap around itself until what came past it sounded like nonsense. "Maw-Maw," was the mule, he could remember that much. "The mule, you called the mule Maw-Maw." That didn't help. What else had Luke told him? Oh, right. "Jedediah," he said, though he might have inserted a few too many _D_s in there. "This," he added, waving the handkerchief in the air again. "Is Luke's." And spotted with blood. Not improving his present circumstances at all.

Eyes squinted down at him and suddenly he could see it. Blue, not the same as Luke's; darker, flecked with other colors. Hair a little lighter but with a curl that matched her cousin's, and that gun pointing right at him. This was why men believed in Yellow-eye and didn't ask any questions about the slender body or unconvincing voice. Because that steely-hard look told Bo without a word being uttered that he was as good as dead if he couldn't get his tongue untangled.

"He's been shot," Bo explained. Saw an eyebrow twitch but the gun didn't waver. "But he's going to be all right. Doc's taking care of him."

"Where was he shot?" the question came from behind the muzzle of the revolver that promised to take his life if he made any false moves.

"I don't know exactly," he answered. "Some fields over near the railroad tracks."

Impatient shake of Yellow-eye's head, then the gun came down and she was just Daisy again. She was different when she was a woman. Vulnerable. And, he'd swear just from the way her eyes sort of misted over, naturally trusting. She sure as heck didn't belong in the middle of the mess that this town had become. "No," she clarified. "I mean, where on his body?"

"Oh, his shoulder. But," she was trying to put her gun back in the holster, but it just wouldn't go in right. Maybe it was because her hands were shaking. "He's going to be all right. Doc Cooter says he won't even lose his arm."

"Damn it," she hissed, hard to say whether it was about the artillery that she was mishandling, the way her hands were betraying her or the words he'd just said. "Take me to him."

"No!" he snapped, thought better of it a second too late. She was still armed and he still wasn't. He took a step closer, hands up in the air in surrender again. "He don't want you to go to him."

"Well, he ain't in no position to stop me is he?" Gun finally where she wanted it to be, she started to march past him in a huff.

"Daisy," he said, grabbing her arm, and that just about did it. She wheeled on him, her hand up and all set to slap his cheek. He stood still, ready to take what he had coming to him for touching a girl that hadn't given him her permission, but it never came. She folded into tears instead, burying her face in his chest. Seemed like he ought to put his arms around her but then he wasn't sure that was the wisest choice he could make. His hands came up anyway, fidgeting in the air near her back, a phantom of a hug. Finally she pushed herself back and wiped her eyes so he dropped his arms back down to his sides. "I'm sorry," he said.

"I just," she started, hiccuped, went back to the beginning. "I just been so worried about him. It was—I could ignore what you was saying or figure you got it all wrong until you called me that. Only he would know that."

Funny, of all the things that Duke had drilled into his head, he'd never suggested Bo call her Daisy.

"He also said you wasn't to go to the doc's to see him," he reminded her.

"I don't reckon I care what he said. Not that part anyway," she snapped back, eyes slitted again and she looked like a wild critter. Maybe even the rabid kind. _Saying I let her be in the feud is like saying I let it rain last Thursday. Daisy's got a mind of her own_, Luke had said and dang it all if that didn't turn out to be the absolute truth.

"All right," he compromised. "We'll go back to him, both of us. But you can't be Yellow-eye. I know them Hickorys," of course he did, her rolled eyes reminded him. He'd been one of them until a week or so ago, and as far as she knew, even more recently than that. "They're going to be on the lookout for you. I reckon they think Duke's dead, and if so, they'll want to kill you next. You two is—" legendary and he just couldn't figure how a woman could be so powerful in a man's fight. "Anyway, you can't go looking like that. You got to find a way to be a girl."

Laughter, and he was glad to hear it, even if it was still nasal and halfway sounded like tears. "Don't make it sound so awful," she said. "Here, hold this," she added, unstrapping her gun belt and handing it over.

"I ain't," he stuttered, tried again. "I don't like guns."

She laughed some more and laid it on the steps of the schoolhouse. Funny to think that in the daytime, children's feet would step in that very same spot. "Ain't it a bad idea for you to be feuding, then?"

"I'm the best horseman they—had." Because his days with the Hickorys were very definitely in the past.

"You got a horse?"

"Nope," he said and couldn't help feeling, from the way she shook her head at him, that it was the wrong answer. But he'd never owned anything, really. Just the clothes he wore and those were all second-hand anyway. Well, there had been that jug of whiskey, but it had been sacrificed to the doc as a painkiller for Luke.

"How do you feel about spiders?"

He didn't have any particular opinion of them one way or the other, which was how he got dispatched to crawl through a far-too-small hole in the latticework under the schoolhouse steps, then under the floorboards of the building. Found the rough weave of the burlap sack right where Daisy told him it would be and pushed it back out at her. Crawled back out with all manner of filth in his hair and on his clothes, only to get scolded by the woman.

"Now don't you peek," she said as she poked through the bag, pulling out skirts and petticoats, a bodice and other things he might ought to blush to see. He turned his back and left her to her dressing.

"Luke said you should go up to see your parents," he pointed out, one last ditch effort at dissuading her from what she was planning to do.

"Of course he did," she answered back, huffing and puffing and it sounded like an awful lot of effort just for getting into clothes. He turned his head to take a look, and did get slapped then. Not hard, just the flat of her hand on his shoulder and—

"No peeking!" she reminded him.

"You sounded like you was wrestling with a wild boar," he defended himself, got smacked again. A little harder this time. He shrugged, turned back around. "All right, but if'n you _do_ get attacked by a wild animal, I ain't going to help you." That seemed to suit her fine.

"Of course he wants me to go up to my parents' house," she repeated when she'd gotten over being mad at him. Or maybe after she'd finished putting on her corset. "He probably wants me to stay up there, too. _He_'s the one gets shot and he figures on protecting _me_. Dang fool." More heavy breathing and grunting sounds, but he figured that even if she was getting mauled by a bear, now wouldn't be the time to go provoking her by taking another look. "I bet he wants me to live up there forever and marry Milo Beaudry, too."

"Uh, no ma'am," he answered and braced himself to get hit again. _Ma'am_ didn't necessarily seem to be the right thing to call the Porter gang's notorious scout. But he was spared the smack, maybe because she was still too busy wrestling with her clothing. "He didn't say nothing about nobody getting married or no one called Milo. He said you should ask your pa about…" _me_, but it was as though he'd eaten a mouthful of sand. He—he was a fool. It was too much to ask for, too much to lose. He'd never had anything at all (except a million questions) and he'd been just fine. Hadn't missed what he didn't have and—

"All right, I'm done. You can look now."

So he swallowed his words and turned. "Whoa," he gasped. Felt his jaw drop open like a landed fish gulping for the water it'd just been pulled from. "You're beautiful." The dress was a simple cut and a dull gray material, her sloppily shorn hair was hidden under an equally plain bonnet. Still, it was undeniable; the girl had enough magnetism to pull a train right off its tracks.

"Why, Babe Sheridan," she said, batting her eyelashes exaggeratedly, flirting in an odd, staged sort of way that was more sarcasm than seduction. "You say the sweetest things."

"Bo," he managed to correct.

"What?" the woman answered back, all pretense of toying with him gone as she bent to gather up her male garb. Bo figured that even if she was plenty capable of doing it herself, it couldn't be any fun to move around in those clothes, so he stooped to help. Found himself getting handed the sack and told to hold it open so she could stuff the clothing into it.

"Bo. It's my name. Just the women at the orphanage called me Babe and somehow or other people got to thinking it was what I wanted to be called. But it ain't," he asserted as he pushed her recently shucked breeches into the sack and stood back up to his full height.

"Bo?" she asked, like that was somehow funnier than Babe. "That it? Just Bo?"

"Well, that's most of it." As much of it as he reckoned he wanted to part with, anyway.

"Most?" Oh, but she wasn't going to let it go.

"You want these back under there?" he asked, holding up the sack of clothing. She nodded absent-mindedly, so he went to the hole, got to his knees and started crawling.

"Most?" she called after him.

"Most."

"That mean there's more?" he could hear the way she was trying to flirt the information out of him in the tone her voice.

"I reckon," he answered. It was full-out dark under here. Close and small, and probably full of all manner of creatures that he'd just as soon know nothing about. But it was also safe. A place where his face wouldn't betray him by going red. "As far as anyone knows, my name is Beauregard. It was on the note that I was found with."

"Beauregard." Muffled by the tight confines of his current location, her voice sounded hollow, distant. Disconnected, like it was part of some other conversation, one that didn't involve him at all. "I think it's pretty." Sure, this coming from a woman who let herself be called Yellow-eye. He certainly was in a hurry to trust her judgment.

"Sheridan ain't my real name either." He was done stuffing the sack back into the corner from which it had come, but still he stayed right where he was. Black nook in the dark of a lost county on the edge of Georgia, where nobody cared what happened to it, and from in here he could say, "It's just what all them children in the orphanage that don't have no other name get called. Pastor Jesse says I look like a Duke."

Funny, since he was so sure that he was safe under here, isolated from sight and sound, how he could hear her breath suck inward at that.

"Babe Sheridan, you get out here."

Oh, he was brave here in his lightless hovel, but he still didn't have the nerve he would have needed to resist that order. He came out, dusting off his breeches and shaking the webs and other manner of grime out of his hair. Stood and faced her. Almost flinched when a hand came up toward his face, stood his ground. Fingers gripping his jaw, tipping his chin down and turning his face side-to-side to get the best look at it that the moonlight would allow.

"Luke said your pa was the one who would know. If'n he looked in the family bible. Jesse reckoned I might belong to Isaac." Her head cocked to the side as she considered this. Dropped her hand away from his face but didn't stop her scrutiny. "That's what Luke wanted you to go up the hill to find out."

"Well," she announced turning on her heel. Wobbled a little bit on her feet until she found the rhythm of walking over stony ground in heeled shoes. "I ain't going nowhere at all until he gets better. So you'd best just take me to him."

_She has a mind of her own._ Bo shook his head, snickered and led the way.


	33. Witchy Woman

**33. Witchy Woman**

It wasn't Traveler. That was the first thing he noticed, that his mount wasn't his own. Or maybe it was, when he looked down on a gray mane and felt the breadth of the frame under his thighs he knew it was White Lightning, the gelding that'd been a resident of the Duke farm as long as he had, maybe longer. He'd learned how to ride on White Lightning, loved the critter, but knew rides on his back were a thing of the past. Still there Luke was, astride White Lightning and galloping across the browned grasses of late summer, feeling the breeze on his face, smelling the fresh-turned dirt under the horse's hooves.

But it wasn't right. Because White Lightning was as gone as everything else he'd ever loved.

He was in the old farmhouse kitchen then, food on a plate in front of him and he was hungry. A true farm breakfast with eggs and pancakes and sausage. Milk fresh from the goat; still warm. He could feel that, the way it coursed down his throat and into his belly, the heat inside him. But he couldn't taste any of it and no matter how much food he ate, his stomach still growled emptily.

He was in bed next, somehow living his day backward. The sun, which had just been shining, unrose, went below the horizon on the east, and he slept.

"Shh," his mother whispered. "Let him rest." He smiled. Didn't want to, figured it'd be better to keep up the illusion that he was asleep, to let his mother stroke his hair and kiss his forehead and do all those things he was too old for when he was awake. She kissed him anyway, he felt the softness of her lips, the warmth of her breath on his skin, the choking heat of the way she hugged him, nearly smothering him and he couldn't get enough air. There was smoke in his room, and smoke in his lungs and fire everywhere. He had to get up, had to save his ma and his pa and his baby brother, the house and the barn and—

"Whoa!" Harsh, loud, directly in his ear. "You just settle down now, you hear?"

A whimper; it took him a second to realize it was his own. Then the pain came back to him, familiar as a friend but not half as welcome.

"Easy, sugar," came the second voice. Quieter, gentler, and further away. The hands on his elbows pinning him down – how long had they been there? Holding him still, keeping him from moving when he'd—

Probably been writhing around in his bed. Doc Cooter's bed. Not the farm but the infirmary, where he was lying, hurt. Supposed to be resting, not fighting with his own blankets, so he took a deep breath. Felt it shudder through his body and nodded at everything and nothing. _Yeah_, he silently told the hands holding onto him. _I got myself under control now._

There wasn't full sun yet; he hadn't slept as far into this morning as he had for the last couple of days. Dingy gray light and when he peered into it, he mostly saw yellow hair. Then the head tipped up and he met Bo's eyes. The boy had been holding him down against his own dreams without any real sense of the danger he'd put himself in. Luke could have hurt him, really hurt him without meaning to. It was the instinct of the fighter, after all, to kill what threatened him while he slept.

"Girl," he said when he could finally see around the broadness of Bo's shoulders. There was Daisy, looking deeply concerned. "What are you doing here?"

Bo stepped back quick then, eyes round. Out of the line of fire, because he figured Luke was about to get thrashed. So, he'd learned that Daisy had a strong will and quick hands. But she wouldn't hurt Luke now, not when he was already injured. He hoped.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she snapped right back at him. "_I got a little thing I got to do_, you said. _Nothing important and I'll be back before dawn_. Two days and nothing, Luke, nothing! Then you send this pitiful excuse for a man," pause there and she turned her head to look at Bo. "No offense—"

"None taken," he assured her, still retreating to a corner of the room.

"To tell me you been shot? What was you thinking, Luke Duke?"

"Well now," came from the doorway, half engulfed in a yawn. "All these years of people calling you nothing but Duke, and I forgot your mama named you Luke. Luke Duke," and a silly grin, because a rhyming name was just that funny. The doctor's finger coming to a point, getting ready to do some more laughing, and then he caught sight of Daisy.

"Uh, Cooter," Luke introduced, "this is my cousin Daisy." He looked her over right quick – some smudges on her face and her dress was a little off-kilter, slightly twisted-looking, as if she had gotten dressed in the dark. Which she must've, and she wasn't supposed to be here now. But there she stood and near as he could tell she looked enough different from Yellow-eye that the doc wouldn't make any uncomfortable connections. "She's from up on Lookout Ridge," was strictly factual. "Bo just fetched her here." If Cooter wanted to connect those two thoughts and assume she'd come here directly from Lookout Ridge, that was his prerogative. "Daisy," he said pointedly, because she was supposed to be meeting the man for the first time, "this is Doc Cooter. He's the best medic this town's got." And also the only one, but that didn't make him any less good.

"Charmed, I'm sure," Daisy asserted in that breathy voice that she saved for wheedling secrets out of half-drunken boys in the saloon. She offered her gloved hand for a kiss, and Cooter was so busy admiring her beauty that he never did notice the smudge of dirt on the pinky finger. Besides, it wasn't that bad. For a girl who hated women's clothing so much, she managed to keep what little she had in pretty good condition, even if it did spend most of its time lying in the dirt under the old schoolhouse. Overall she looked just like a girl who'd just traveled a few bumpy miles ought to look, crooked bonnet (hiding the butchering job he'd done on her hair) and all. So long as Cooter didn't start wondering where her wagon and horse were.

But he was a bit too distracted at the moment. "Likewise," he answered, smile making its way up his face to settle in his twinkling eyes. "I was just going to yell at these boys for waking me up so early, but y'all just go on making whatever noise you want, as long as the lady is here. I'm just going to go back on upstairs and make myself decent." Which was a good idea. The doc wasn't dressed in much more than threadbare cotton underthings covered over with a stained and well-worn robe. Any other man would be embarrassed under the circumstances. Cooter just scratched himself in a place that was somewhat questionable for mixed company and wandered back out.

Daisy made herself quieter then, but she was no less dangerous. Her eyes were squinted down to slits and she was marching right up to his bed. "And," would have seemed out of place to anyone who didn't know her, but Daisy could hold onto a grudge, or even just the thought that a grudge might be hidden somewhere in her surroundings, like a champ. "You tried to send me up the hill instead of letting me take care of you? What was you thinking?"

Well, for starts, he was thinking that he really didn't want to get hit, even if she never did anything worse than a hard swat. Because in his current condition he was in no position to run from her or even hold up a hand in self-defense.

"Look," he tried to explain. "There ain't nothing you can do for me. I got Doc Cooter and Cletus looking out for me day and night. You start coming and going from here and things could get real sticky." Of course, if Babe Sheridan got spotted around here too often, questions might get asked too. Might not; the boy apparently had a pass to go wherever he wanted in town. Everyone seemed to have some sort of claim on him. Even crazy old Jesse. "Besides, you're the only one who can go up there and get that answer Bo's looking for, about whether he's kin."

And then there was the thing Luke wouldn't say. How half the time he was medicated on whiskey and not too sure what he was rambling about. The girl might have been living amongst men for a few years, but he didn't want her around when he couldn't quite be sure what his loosened tongue might get to saying.

"Luke Duke," she stormed, "that's the worst plan you've come up with in a year. Letting Doc Cooter look out for you when he don't even know how to dress himself."

"Sweetheart," he cooed, instantly regretted it. Bo over there in the corner was considering the window as a viable escape. He must've figured out the hard way that Daisy was a sight more dangerous than a tornado bearing down at full speed. "Doc's fixed up plenty of people before." And he might just have some extra fixing to do when it came to Luke, if Daisy broke some other part of him. Which she seemed to have a hankering to do. "And you ain't never questioned his skills." She stopped short of hitting him. Just short, standing there staring straight down into his face and even if it was impossible when the sun wasn't even properly shining through the window yet, throwing a shadow over him. "I'll be fine. But things out there is going to get strange. I've gone missing a couple of days at a time before." Right, that wasn't a good thing to remind her of. She'd never taken his disappearing acts with any amount of grace. "The boys are just waiting for me to come back. But you give them another day or so, and they're going to want to do something."

And they'd be looking to Daisy to gather whatever information she could on his disappearance, maybe even to lead them on some sort of mission of rescue and revenge. "It'll make an awful mess of things for you." Because she might be hiding her identity, she might lead everyone to believe she was a man, and in so doing mangle the sound of her name. But when it came right down to it, she was a Duke. She had her honor and she couldn't go taking their gang out on a mission that was, at its core, a lie.

"You disappear too," he went on, despite her frowning. It wasn't a mean frown anyway, it was more the thinking sort. "And they'll just chase their tails for a few days." And hopefully stay out of the Governor's way while he married his daughter off tidily, but he wasn't going to worry too hard about that part. The way he saw it, Rosco could just handle whatever came up all by himself. The marshal wasn't the one who'd been shot. "You stay up there until Saturday," which gave her two days walking time and two days visiting, at the end of which she'd be ready to get back down here anyway. He was pretty sure she loved her mother, but the two of them did not live together peacefully and never had. "By the time you get back, I should be all right and then we can go back to camp and corral them boys."

She didn't like it. All the same, she was going to do it and that was all that mattered.

"All right, I'll go up there. I'll talk to my daddy about him," rough hand gesture indicating Bo, who had at least peeled himself away from the wall and no longer appeared to be in search of a previously undetected crack in the plaster through which to disappear. "And I'll stay away for a couple of days. But when I get back down here you'd best be healed up." The girl had fire in her eyes. "So I can give you what you got coming for scaring me like that. Oh," she added, bending low then reaching up under her skirts. Both he and Bo automatically diverted their eyes. After a few seconds he felt a dead weight land on the foot of the bed. Her gun belt. "In case you need it," she instructed. "Now best you get some rest so you're ready for me when I get back down here." And with that, she flounced out of the room.

"I'll uh," Bo stammered, pointing at the ghost of where the girl had just been. "Walk her out."

Which left Luke alone to contemplate just how he was going to save his hide from all the ways in which Daisy might unleash her temper, once he got better. Made getting shot seem tame in comparison.


	34. I Can't Tell You Why

**34. I Can't Tell You Why**

"Listen," Bo had said to her when they'd walked a short distance together. Beyond the confines of Cooter's pitiful patch of grass where the chickens roamed and clucked, looking just as lost as chickens could. Past the outhouse that listed awfully hard to the left and off into the long grasses of the meadow just beyond. "Don't," he was a very cute boy, really. Young, with that sandy mustache trying to grow him up, but his face was still so round. And trusting. Odd that he had grown unusually tall, because those deep blue eyes just begged for someone to look up to. "Don't come back down just for me. I mean, no matter what you find, if you want to stay up there—"

"Bo Sheridan," she'd interrupted. Had it been Luke she would've been yelling at him already, but from this boy it was almost funny. "Are you trying to protect me?"

"I just don't figure that the feud is any place for a woman, is all."

She should have stopped him right there and given him the dressing down he deserved, should have yelled at him and maybe swatted him hard for good measure. But she didn't, she just quit walking. Took the boy a few seconds to realize she'd stopped, then turn around and stride back to her. He just stood there, head cocked to the side and eyes fixed on her.

"I don't figure the feud is anyplace anyone ought to be," she'd said, eventually. "Just look at what happened to Luke."

"But you're gonna come back down," hadn't been a question, just shared knowledge between them. They'd started walking again. "And get right back into the middle of it in just a few days' time. How come?"

She'd laughed at a thing that wasn't at all funny. "Duke," who was an entirely different person from that man lying back at the doc's, face pinched in pain, but soul loosened by whatever medicines were coursing through him. He'd called her sweetheart for the first time in years and even if he'd only said it to make her do what he wanted, it was still frighteningly good to hear. Because it reminded her that Luke was a likable person, loveable even. But _Duke_, well, he was stubborn and vengeful and determined. "Ain't never going to walk away from what he's doing. Soon as he's better, he'll be back out there with his fingers wrapped so tight around his gun that they go white. He ain't going to quit until he gets what he wants or he gets himself killed. I reckon it's my job to try to keep him alive as long as I can."

Bo clearly thought that was ridiculous, just from the way the corner of his mouth had curled in distaste. "I reckon we can talk him out of going back if we try, can't we?" Ah, he was so innocent, so naïve, and he'd clearly never dealt with anyone as stubborn as a Duke. (And yet, somehow, he imagined himself to be one. Odd.) "I may or may not be kin like you are, but I saved his life, so that ought to count for something. Besides, he's been hurt now. He was lying in a field begging me to kill him and I figure he can't be in a hurry to get himself in that predicament again."

She'd grabbed his elbow then to stop his momentum. The more Bo talked the faster he walked and his legs were already long enough that she just about had to trot to keep up. Besides, he really needed to be getting back to Luke. But not before he understood.

"You ain't going to have any more sway with Luke than I do, and I ain't got any at all. I reckon you're welcome to try, but you'd best know the whole story first." She'd looked him in the eye, getting annoyed at how far back she had to tip her head to do it. "You remember that field you found him in?"

"Of course I do." It wasn't the kind of thing a man could forget, his tone had said. "Out there near the railroad tracks. There weren't nothing around for at least a mile in each direction."

"Not now, there ain't," she'd agreed. "But if it's the field I think, there used to be and Luke still remembers what it all looked like, down to the smallest splinter. He goes out there and he don't notice nothing except the clearing where there ain't no trees, the rotted out remnants of a fence and that place where the land dips low in a near-perfect rectangle. There used to be a house there. You could sneak right up on him when he's at that place and he'd never know it because he's seeing ghosts." Bo had nodded like he knew what she meant, but he didn't. The boy had clearly been utterly spooked by finding Luke there bleeding into the ground, but he had no idea how much blood was already in that soil. "You know what happened to his family?"

Bo had bitten his lip, like this was some sort of a test and he was trying to remember the right answer. Looking even younger than usual and she hadn't liked telling him, but he was going to go poking around until he found out anyway.

"That land was the farm he grew up on. Someone killed his family there. Burned them right in their beds. He's the only one left alive to tell the tale."

Big, round eyes; slack-jawed wonder on Bo's face.

"That was him?" Ah, so news of what happened out there in the meadows of a farm on the outskirts of town had made it all the way to the orphanage. Maybe not the details, but Bo knew some part of it.

"That was him," she'd confirmed. "You know who did it?"

"Who?" Bo had asked, leaning inward like he just couldn't wait to hear the answer to this fine mystery.

She had smiled, despite herself. Some part of her hoped Bo had heard some Hickorys bragging about doing the deed, just so Luke wouldn't have to wonder anymore. Another part of her was glad that Bo looked so utterly innocent and amazed, because it meant that Luke wouldn't go off trying to exact revenge right now. Hurt like he was, he'd get himself killed for sure.

"Nobody knows, except them that did it. Duke's spent over two years trying to find out. Sure, he fights in the feud, and he's a dang good fighter, too. But the only thing he hopes to get out of it is to learn who done the deed so he can get his revenge."

Bo's face hadn't so much fallen as just sort of flattened. He'd obviously admired whatever he thought of Duke as, had been in awe of the legend. It looked like it was hitting him hard to find out who Luke really was.

"So you can try talking him out of feuding, but you ought to know what you're up against, is all."

"But that's just," Bo had been working himself up into a fine fit of—something. Hard to tell what it was, really. Hands on hips and chest puffed like a bantam rooster. "Dumb, that don't make no sense. Don't he know that killing someone ain't going to bring his folks back? I been an orphan all my life. I ought to know that there ain't nothing that can bring back them that's gone."

She had smiled, even if she felt sad. This Bo, he made her think of puppies, with their soft fur and their big eyes, the way their tails wagged and how they had utter faith that the world was a place full of table scraps and belly rubs.

"Sometimes," she'd explained, "a man's got to tear down the mountains just to prove that there ain't no gold underneath." Puppies cocked their heads to the side like that too, when they were trying to figure out what on earth the humans were saying to them. "Sometimes you got to let him do it, even if you know there ain't no point. You just try talking Luke out of feuding. See how far you get."

Bo had sighed, his lips pressing into each other in distaste. He'd looked down at the ground like he couldn't stand to see her face anymore, then his head came back up. "Daisy, would you quit? I mean, would you give up being Yellow-eye, scouting around town, being a man," being a legend, "if Luke would quit feuding?"

She hadn't answered, not then. She'd asked him his birthdate (which he didn't exactly know), any details he had from when he'd been found, precisely what Pastor Jesse had told him, and whether he had a photograph of himself. There wasn't much he could give her (he laughed about the photograph—such things were expensive and nobody was going to spend that kind of money so that orphans could have likenesses of themselves) but the effort had distracted him enough that he forgot he'd even asked her a question.

Not that it mattered. The words chased her up the mountain anyway. _Would you give it all up? Would you be a woman again?_

A woman. A desperate woman, that was what she had been. Maybe it wouldn't be that way again, not if she could stay down here in the city. Get herself a little house with a porch to sit on and a couple of flowers by the stoop. And, well, while she was dreaming, she might as well give herself an indoor water closet.

One thing was as unlikely as the next. As Yellow-eye, she slept in dirt and wandered off into the cover of trees to do anything that required privacy, but at least she had a purpose. A job of sorts, a skill that men wanted and it kept her in food and clothing at the very least. The minute she traded in her knickers for a dress, she gave up any pretense of self-sufficiency and became an unfortunate old maid. With no money or property (like Miz Tisdale, who had inherited the boarding house that allowed her to feed herself), about the only living a single girl could earn was in doing what Miss Mabel's girls did. And the brothel already had a girl that called herself Daisy.

Which would leave her up on the hill again, not just for a short trip like this, but forever. Milo Beaudry had probably found another girl to say his 'I do' to by now, but there would be others. Her papa would come home with a name on his tongue and she'd be obligated to marry whoever it was. She had already run away once; she couldn't shame her parents a second time.

Or maybe no man would have her now, and she'd live up there in that lonely house until she died.

It was a shame, though. She really would have liked to meet Enos Strate as Daisy. Just once, just so she wouldn't have to pretend around him, just to see what it was like.

The narrow path in front of her wound around a crag, grasses and ferns wilting in the late summer heat. The trail had been there longer than she had, longer than any Duke. Each year the flowers alongside it bloomed up then died back again to give way to crusts of frost and ice. It was a cycle that couldn't be escaped.

Just like the one down in the valley below. Bo was a silly boy that had put odd notions into her head. Considerations of giving up her masculine alter-ego, going back to the dress and the corset and the loneliness on the hill were all foolishness. In the end she would be back down there in a few days, wearing breeches and flanking Luke as he resumed his quest for revenge.


	35. My Man

**35. My Man**

"Luke Duke," he giggled, knew he shouldn't. There appeared to be a gun in the infirmary now, a real one, and though the man in question was in the sort of condition where he _shouldn't_ use it, that didn't mean he _wouldn't_. "I forgot all about that."

Those rolled eyes, they were just for the words. Cooter was dressed now and his clothes were even clean, so there was nothing else for the Duke boy to be annoyed by. Or frustrated, or whatever it was that caused him to make so many faces that called people fools without his tongue ever having to say a word. Oh, he was an angry young man, and Cooter figured his reasons for that were solid. But his utter lack of patience with those he deemed less smart than him, he'd always had it and it always had been fun to pick at him precisely because he figured himself to be too smart for it all.

"Your mama," he said, as he untied the dressing over that gunshot wound. "Sure had an odd sense of humor." Didn't like the look of the skin underneath the bandage, how it was pink then red the closer to the wound it got.

"My ma named me Lukas," came firing back at him irritably. With good reason, he figured; you didn't make fun of someone's dead mother.

"Now, see, I forgot that part, too," he said with a grin before letting his fingers settle on the boy's shoulder. Nope, he didn't like the heat there any more than he liked the color. Didn't like the way those blue eyes stared at his ceiling—hard, like if he focused there he wouldn't feel any pain, but the tensed muscles in the boy's body had already put the lie to that. "Well, Lukas," he didn't like the shine on the Duke boy's forehead either, those tiny droplets of sweat beading up. "Looks like your girl cousin done got you all het up." More rolled eyes for the stupid suggestion. "Where'd you send her off to, anyways?" She'd been fine to look at, slender and curved in all the right parts, light skin and dark hair mostly hidden under her bonnet. He'd heard his front door close while he was upstairs dressing, so he wasn't terribly surprised to see her gone. Disappointed, yes; surprised, no.

"She went up to her folks," came the tired-sounding answer, and Cooter didn't like that, either.

"Ain't that where she just came from?"

The Duke boy winced in lieu of the shrug that had hurt him when he'd tried to do it. Picked up the fingers of his left hand and waved them in the air in dismissal of the conversation.

"Was you wrestling with them two?" Cooter had been awakened by muffled bumping, like furniture getting moved in a distant part of the house, then there'd been some loud voices. By the time he'd made it to the bottom of the stairs it had all quieted, and somewhere in there he'd caught sight of Luke's cousin and forgotten everything else. Until now.

"I had a dream. Bo woke me up out of it. It wasn't no big deal."

"Lukas," felt funny on his tongue; he really had forgotten the boy's first name. He guessed it was easy enough to do, easy to forget that he'd been a genuine youngster once. That he had smiled sometimes and played, that he'd always been plenty healthy and above-average serious, but there had been some fun in him. Once, and not all that long ago either, but any sign of it was gone now. "I need you to tell me the truth here and don't give me none of that 'it ain't so bad' nonsense that you normally come out with. You in more pain today?"

"Some." Which meant a lot.

The boy was bound and determined to prove him a fool for having stitched the wound. It hadn't been the easiest decision—stitching made wounds heal faster unless it sealed in infection, in which case it just made everything worse. Never a simple choice, but he'd known this boy's body since it was young, and it had always been pretty resistant to sickness before.

Except now, when it was flushed and fevered.

"You're a fool," he scolded—himself or Luke, or look there, Bo Sheridan was back. All three of them were fools. "What you got to go getting shot for?" All right, he was going to blame the Duke boy. Who chuckled low, even if he was the one at risk for dying. "Bo," Cooter instructed, "go wake Cletus up."

"I'm fine, Doc," Luke interjected into the sound of Bo's retreating footsteps, but he couldn't hear the way his tongue dragged over the words, how tired and just plain beaten he sounded.

"You're fine," Cooter repeated. "Well, that's nice. You're fine and I'm crazy for thinking otherwise. Just call me Crazy Cooter," he mumbled, shaking his head.

"Crazy Cooter," Luke answered back, because he really figured he was funny. "I wouldn't mind a little whiskey, though," he admitted, which went to show just how fine he wasn't.

Cooter had a theory about whiskey. Right here in Dade County, some of the finest stuff in the business got brewed up. Not as much these days as there had been a few years back, but there was still enough around, so carefully refined that you could call it medicine instead of liquor. Cooter used it liberally to treat pain.

Because the alternative was morphine, and he kept some of that stuff around, too. Used it only when the whiskey didn't work or when the paining person was a teetotaler and refused liquor, because the problem with morphine was that people still craved it after the pain was gone. Whiskey, men who didn't want it could shed themselves of the urge to drink it pretty quick, and those that did want it — well, that was just about everyone he knew, and they'd been drinking it all their lives already. He wasn't introducing a new habit into them.

But whiskey only went so deep and soothed so much pain. For the really ugly cases, he had to use the hard stuff. And Luke Duke was about to need morphine.

"Cletus," he hollered when the clomping on the stairs descended too slowly. "Go on to the basement and take Bo with you. Chop up some ice." Because the other thing that this boy needed was an ice cold bath to bring down that temperature.

"I'm fine, Doc," the Duke boy tried to insist again. "Just a little tired is all. If you'd let me sleep—"

"Boy," he scolded. "You just settle down and don't cause no trouble now. You get to fighting me and you're gonna hurt a lot worse. You got to be still and let me tend to you." The stitches had to come out; the wound needed to breathe. After that they all needed to set to praying, because saving the Duke boy's arm was going to take a miracle. And given where the injury was, even taking the arm wouldn't necessarily keep him alive. "You just lie still." Blue eyes closed compliantly.

They came flying open a couple of minutes later, after Cooter had gone out and gotten his bag of tools. Tiny scissors snipping at the sutures and the boy was wide awake again.

"What are you doing?"

"Cletus!" he hollered again. That fool would spend all day in the cellar chipping away at the ice blocks if Cooter let him. "I'm gonna have to open you up; settle down." And he stopped cutting the stitches away long enough to get Luke the bottle of whiskey. Lifted his head so the boy could drink without choking, let him down a good swallow or two before taking the bottle away.

"Can't you just," the Duke boy pleaded with him, and it was heartbreaking. High and pained, not the rough, graveled voice that he normally spoke in. "Let it be a little longer and see if it gets better on its own? I got—I'm supposed to—I don't want to stay here for a long time or nothing, it was almost healed."

It was hard to say whether the boy was delirious or if he really believed that. Because even in an ideal situation, that shoulder injury would have taken weeks to properly mend.

"What's wrong?" That was Bo, not Cletus. His apprentice was probably still only halfway here, huffing and puffing all the way.

"Hold him down," Cooter instructed, because he didn't have the time or patience to wait for the slow-moving Cletus. "Quick now, don't be hem-hawing about it."

Bo nodded and stepped into place. Grabbed the Duke boy's arms just above the elbow and held him firm. "I'm sorry, Luke," he whispered.

The Duke boy turned his head as far to the side as he could, away from his injured shoulder and away from where the two men stood.

"What do you need, boss?" Cletus blurted, having finally arrived in the doorway.

"Just bring up the ice you got and fill the steel tub. When I'm done here, we're going to have to cool him off." Cletus was gone with the slow thud of heavy feet.

"This is going to sting," Cooter counseled, waited for a nod or any acknowledgement at all that he'd been heard. Got none and figured he'd given fair warning anyway, so he poured whiskey into the wound. Not a sound from Luke, but every muscle in his body stiffened down like there was a spring inside him that was wound tight enough to break.

"Picture a meadow," Bo started, his face close to the Duke boy's ear. "The grass is green, there's a stream running across it." Muscles in Luke Duke's jaw still clenched; it was hard to tell whether he was listening. Cooter took out his scalpel to reopen the wound. "There's a horse by the stream, drinking," Bo was saying, as Luke tensed against the sharp sting of the blade cutting into his skin. "It's your horse Luke," Bo went on. "You can get up on him and ride." Another flinch when Cooter cut through more skin. "Tell me what you see."

The doctor figured Bo was about to get told to shut up, that the notorious Duke wasn't interested in bedtime stories.

"I see trees," came mumbling out. "And downstream there's a pond. Full of fish."

"What kind of fish?"

The Duke boy flinched against the pain again, then settled. "Catfish," came out strained, but steady enough.

"You can dismount and get out your pole, if you want," Bo offered. "Settle down there and toss your line in the water."

"Got to dig for worms first," Luke reminded him.

It wasn't anything Cooter could explain, medically or even common sense-wise. But somehow or other the injured man was relaxing enough to let him do his job quickly and efficiently.

So he just kept on working and listening to the fairy tale that two boys, who had been on opposite sides of the feud until just days ago, were spinning up together.


	36. Take it Easy

**36. Take it Easy**

She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. "Hello, cousin," she whispered.

They met at the apothecary, like young folks courting. She'd had to send word through "Doc" Appleby, who had told Miz Tisdale who had passed the information on to old Tom McDougall, and it had gone on from there until it made its way to Cletus then Bo. Didn't sound like much to most people, and she figured she was lucky enough that the message for "Babe" to meet "the girl from the hill" at the apothecary for a fountain drink on Saturday evening had gotten through at all. And been understood.

Maybe she should have found a gentler way to break it to him. There for a second she was sure she'd killed him. Blank staring, no movement, not even—"Breathe, Babe,"—she suggested, because a body needed to do that if nothing else.

He didn't take her advice, but he did offer her a breathless smile, trembling at the edges. Pulled out a chair for her to sit in, but that was all under the pretense of being a gentleman. What he really wanted was an excuse to find his own seat.

She wasn't as good at being a lady as she'd once been. She'd forgotten the small things, like being ushered into establishments ahead of her companion and clinging demurely to his arm. But she remembered how to sit quietly and fold her hands in front of her while Bo worked around to whatever he was going to say.

"Your papa said I was?" he finally managed to get out, his eyes glowing.

"He didn't have much of anything to say at all," she started, then got interrupted when Bo had to order them both a lemon soda-water.

"Unless you want orange or cherry?" the boy paused long enough to ask her.

"Lemon's fine," she answered, making sure to smile shyly. She'd honestly never had a soda-water in her life and wasn't sure she even wanted one at all, except for the charade she and Bo were presenting to the town required her to sip at something. A young couple out together for the first time ever and she was supposed to be nervous.

The skinny youngster who had interrupted their conversation to find out what they wanted to drink moved on in awkwardly heavy footsteps that marked him as still figuring out his growing body. She guessed him to be a year or so younger than Bo, and wondered how long it would be before she saw his face, heavily marked by the blemishes of adolescence, on one side of the feud or the other.

"You was telling me about your papa," Bo prompted. Which was a perfectly reasonable thing for a beau to say to the girl he had intentions toward.

Daisy kept her own voice low, almost at a whisper, because what she had to say didn't exactly fit the first-date script. "He said you couldn't belong to Isaac, because he and Emma had a girl. Both she and her papa died of scarlet fever in seventy-nine."

"Oh," Bo answered, his eyes losing their glow and his face falling out of the smile he'd been wearing. Their lemon soda-waters arrived, and Bo dug around in his pockets for a few cents to pay the youngster who'd delivered them. Daisy had some money that she'd been given by her papa, but she couldn't pull it out. Not when she was acting the part of the girl, the one being treated to a special delicacy. No matter, she'd pay Bo back later. For her own drink at the very least.

They were alone again, with glass cups of cool liquid in front of them. Bo sipped at his and despite himself smiled a little. Daisy tried hers and understood why; it was good.

"He said if you was anybody's, you had to be Albert's. Katherine is childless, but Albert might have had a child. He don't know, because the last letter he got from him was back in seventy-six."

"So," Bo concluded, smile still on his face, but his eyes looked sad. A little tired, too, and she was going to have to start looking out for him. The youngster clearly had no sense of how to take care of himself. "Then it's a maybe."

Dang, the boy was really good at pretending to be on a date. He looked every bit like she was breaking his heart. (Maybe she was. She didn't mean to be.)

"Well, that's what he said. But then he showed me a tintype that he had of grandpa Jedediah from just before the war. I guess he had it made up for grandma Martha, so's she could look at him every day even if he wasn't there or something." She took another sip of her soda water and figured she and Bo needed to have dates here more often. She'd never tasted the like of this. Much better than what they all wasted time drinking at the saloon, and it was a good bit quieter here, too. "He could be your brother. Except I figure he's your grandpa, too."

There it was, the glow back on the boy's face, that grin popping out like a flower after the rain.

"He ain't as blonde as you, and papa said he probably wasn't as big across the shoulders," because she'd described Bo in every excruciating detail. And it had only been after her father initially rejected the notion that she'd realized how much she wanted it. Wanted Bo to be her baby cousin, to belong to her every bit as much as Luke did. To make his upbeat, trusting personality and sunny smile a part of her daily life. "But I can't see how two people could look so much the same and not be kin. So I don't know about Isaac or Albert or even Katherine, but I figure you're a Duke no matter how you look at it."

Bo was too big for this space. The chair under him looked thin and inadequate for the task of holding him still, the table between them could hardly bear the weight of his elbows. His arms were long and she could see how they just about itched to reach across the table and pull her into a gleeful hug, and how his mouth wanted to holler out a happy yip or two.

And somehow, this oversized man managed to contain himself down to the smallest gesture, just a hand coming across the table to pat her much smaller one. She willed herself to blush like a proper lady, but it just wouldn't come. She diverted her eyes anyway, the way she'd seen girls do when they were supposed to be much too reserved to admit to liking a boy.

"Now I got something I got to tell you," he said. "You want another soda water?"

Yes, she did, but she didn't figure he could afford it, so she shook her head. "No, I just want to hear what you got to say."

He nodded, like he was resolving himself to something. "Our friend, the one that's been ailing?" Oh, he was so clever. There weren't any Hickorys anywhere in this place, just a few pairs of youngsters. But she knew better than anyone the way words could travel around the town until they fell into the wrong ears and caused irreparable damage.

"What about him?" probably came too quickly. Bo was turning out to be a better actor than she was. (Maybe it was the dress. Or the corset or the dang shoes. She did a much better job of this as Yellow-eye.)

"He got a fever. Doc said it was infection setting in."

"What?" she blurted, and he took her hand in his. Carefully, tentatively, like he wasn't sure he was allowed to. Patted it with his other hand as she lowered her eyes again. Forced herself to smile, crooked and nervous, and put on the airs of being a girl who had just been shocked by a naughty suggestion from her beau.

"He's going to be all right," Bo assured her, quietly. "Don't fret. Doc opened him up again—"

"No," she moaned.

"Yes, but it's all right, at least Doc thinks so. He didn't have to do nothing more than clean out the wound," that last word was a whisper, and maybe it was so they could keep their secrets to themselves and maybe it was because it was such an ugly word, and they both knew it. "Our friend seems to be doing better."

She wanted nothing more than to run out of here, to head straight to Doc Cooter's and see Luke. She wasn't sure whether she felt like hugging him or hitting him, but it didn't matter. She wasn't going to do either, not yet.

Because she'd already figured out the risk to Luke if she came and went from Doc Cooter's office. Bo could get away with it; he'd been a patient and friend of the doc his whole life. The town knew them to have spent time together since the youngster called Babe had been knee high to a boll weevil. But as a virtual stranger to town, Daisy had no excuse for walking up Possum Hill on a daily basis. And if she went as Yellow-eye, there'd be immediate trouble.

"He'll be okay, sweetheart," Bo assured her. "You got to have faith in that."

She nodded, but felt tears come to her eyes anyway.

"Come on," Bo whispered, standing and then coming around to take her elbow. Somehow or other, she found her feet and let him lead her to the door. "I'll walk you home."

"Home?" she whispered after they had passed through the apothecary door into the late afternoon light. "I ain't got no home." Unless Bo planned to take her back up the hill to her parents' house.

"I know," Bo answered, leading her down the steps to the street. They crossed over to the other side with the dust kicking up at their ankles, to where there were fewer people that might overhear what he was going to say. "I know all about not having a home." Of course he did. It made her flush up in embarrassment to realize how silly she must sound, complaining to an orphan of having no home. "The way I see it, you got about three choices. First, we can go up to the old school and get you changed into your other clothes."

"No," she answered. She was in no condition to go back to camp and face the men that she and Luke had all but abandoned. They'd have questions of the unanswerable nature. "That don't seem like a good idea."

"Well then, you can bunk in with Miss Mabel over the saloon. She'll let you stay there one night before she puts you to work."

"Bo," she snapped, "I ain't that kind of a girl." No, she was an entirely different kind of girl. The sort that would dress up like a boy for three years so she could shoot guns at other boys.

"All right, then, we got to go this way." And Bo made a left turn towards Daniel's Creek.

Luke was what—sick? Infected, and she knew a little about that. Gangrene could set in and then it would just be a matter of time. If it was his finger or even his hand, she'd figure he could do without it, and the doc could just cut it off. But his shoulder; she wasn't sure there was anything to be done. Bo said he was going to be okay, but what did the blonde boy know? He was too kind, too gentle to even imagine the kind of things that Luke's body was probably doing to itself.

Tears crowded into her eyes again, and she watched the dirt under her feet grow blurry, felt the track of one in the breeze across her cheek. Felt Bo pat her hand, heard the voices of people passing by and hoped none of them were looking too closely at two lovers strolling the streets together. Stepped up when she felt Bo's arm raise under her fingers, stepped up again and again and again. Heard the door open, and then the voice.

"Pastor Jesse, this is Miss Daisy. She's in town visiting afflicted kin and can't stay with them because they're too sick. Can you take her?"

And felt herself get folded into heavy arms, her breath coming in gasps as she was held against a warm, soft chest.

"She'll be safe with me, Babe," Pastor Jesse's voice said as he held onto her.


	37. Love Will Keep Us Alive

**37. Love Will Keep Us Alive**

"Daisy," he said as held a cool cloth to Luke's forehead, "is awfully worried about you."

Blue eyes rolled up to meet his, squinting against the scant light of the lantern. "You saw her?"

Bo nodded and left the cloth where it lay across that dark brow. "Earlier tonight. It's Saturday," which was the day Luke had instructed her to come back. Bo couldn't swear to it, but he figured that a man who was used to commanding a large chunk of a feuding gang usually had a good sense of what day it was. He hadn't much moved on Wednesday or Thursday, though. Probably lost track of time somewhere in there.

"She didn't go back to the gang, did she?"

"Nope. And she don't want to put you at risk by coming here right now either, so she's staying with Pastor Jesse." Bo pressed the back of his fingers against Luke's face, feeling the heat there. Still warm, but not as bad as it had been. With any luck there'd be no need to give him another cold water bath and watch him shiver miserably. Doc said the less they had to move him the better for his shoulder, too.

"That's good. Them boys would be after her to do something—what day did you say it is? Saturday? I been missing for a while. They'd be after her to find me. Or find out what happened to me."

Yeah, Bo knew that; they'd discussed it once already. Luke was still fevered, a little delirious maybe, but he was better than he had been. At least his words made sense now. He wasn't hollering about looking out for trees (and Bo couldn't figure what harm a tree could do a man unless it was falling) or claiming Bo was going too fast when he was doing nothing but standing still watching Luke writhe.

"She needs to lay low until I can get back and wrangle them boys back into some sort of shape. A few more days, maybe." Eyes all but closed.

"Cooter says it'll be a couple of weeks before you're ready to be on your feet again." And then only if the infection didn't come back. Luke's wound was open now, no longer stitched, with a few added gashes where the doc had been forced to cut into him. Covered over loosely by a bandage so it could breathe, and every time the dressing had to be changed and Bo caught sight of it again, it made his stomach curl into itself and sent a chill through him. "And then you can finish recuperating at the church." That part had been Bo's idea. The Hickorys figured Luke for dead, but they had no confirmation. They had to be steadying themselves to be on the receiving end of some retaliation. Soon enough they'd learn about the complete disappearance of Yellow-eye and he figured by then they'd start combing the area looking for where Duke and his infamous scout were hiding out. Or trying to prove they were both gone, and whichever way it worked out, there'd be some serious fighting in the streets of Trenton. About the only place that he figured neither side would dare to touch was the church. Not when it was protected by an old grizzly bear like Jesse.

Luke's left hand came up to grab Bo's wrist and his face registered only a small wince for the way the movement pressed his right shoulder a little harder into the bed.

"It can't take that long," he asserted. "My men, they ain't going to hold themselves together for weeks like that. Besides, the Governor ain't going to be in town but for a couple more days."

Oh, so that was what the banners hanging from all the balconies on Monroe Street had been for. Bo could tell something was happening, but he had been too busy worrying about what news Daisy was going to bring down from the hill and figuring out how to tell her about Luke's setback and then leading her to safety to take any time working it out.

"They'll hide out that long, but then they're going to want to—I don't know what."

Bo used his free hand to pull Luke's fingers away from where they were grasping at him, then to get him to rest his arm at his side again. "You settle down," he mumbled, then took to soaking the cloth in cool water and setting it across Luke forehead again. "That feud, it's been going on a lot longer than you've been in it. There's been lieutenants before you that have come and gone, and the men in the middle of it all, they just keep letting themselves be led. You can't take responsibility for what they done before you got there, and you can't worry about what they do when you ain't there no more, neither. They'll manage." And some would get themselves killed while others got out. But more would come along and the ones that stayed would hardly notice the faces around them changing. Bo couldn't even swear that Doolin and Leadbelly properly recognized that the he had never come back. Though it seemed to him like a tall blonde man ought to be the sort of thing you realized you'd left behind at some point.

"I ain't gone," Luke explained, his voice rough and tired. The man was still fighting infection; there was no two ways about it. "I ain't leaving the feud."

"Then you're a fool," Bo informed him rationally. Figured he'd drop it there, deemed the point unworthy of an argument right now while Luke clearly wasn't thinking straight.

"I ain't quitting," Luke insisted. "I ain't done what I got to do yet."

"Gotten your revenge, you mean." From the way Luke's eyebrows arched, those words took him by surprise. "Luke," he said calmly, patting at those flushed cheeks with the wet cloth. It probably wasn't doing much for cooling him off, but it was an excuse to touch him gently, to try to soothe him away from the fight that he was hell bent on having. "I admit your past is sad." Worse to have had family then lost them, he'd decided, then to have never had them at all. Heck, just waiting for Daisy to come back down the hill and tell him whether or not he was a Duke had just about ripped Bo apart from the inside, and he'd only had the idea in his head for a week or so. Hard to imagine growing up with a family for seventeen years, then losing them.

"It wasn't sad," Luke informed him. "It was—It wasn't perfect, maybe, but it was dang close. We had the farm, the livestock, the house—"

"And each other," Bo finished for him. "You ain't avenging a farm or a house, Luke; it's the people you miss."

"Bah," came back at him, but oddly enough, he reckoned it meant Luke agreed with what he was saying. He just wasn't ever going to admit it in so many words.

"They're gone, and that's—more than sad, it's terrible. And I'm sorry." He really was. In those first days of recuperation, he'd seen signs of the boy Luke once was, the pieces of his childhood self that he carried with him. Bo rather liked that guy and already figured he missed him, even if he'd only he'd only had moments of him at a time. "But I don't see how killing someone else is going to make it right."

"Of course you don't," Luke accused. "You ain't never woke up in the night to find your house burning down."

No, he hadn't. He could admit that, he could see where he had no right to judge Luke's choices, where he ought to just shut his mouth and keep his thoughts too himself. But that was just too damn bad; he had something to say on this matter and it was going to get said.

"You said it was just about perfect. You had a farm, a house, your kin. How is killing someone going to get those things back?"

Rolled eyes, and if Luke could stand to move that much, Bo would probably be getting hit right now. Or at least shoved. "You can't go back. Ain't no one gets to go back. You got to go forward and play the cards you're dealt."

"All right," Bo agreed, "that sounds good. So here's your cards: you got a hole in your shoulder, you got a bed underneath you, and you got a fever. You play them cards."

"Fine," Luke snapped, closing his eyes.

"No, not fine, because I ain't done yet. That's just your first hand. Now here's the next one you're about to get dealt. When you get better, you got farm land, you got Daisy, and oh yeah, you got me. We ain't your ma and your pa, but me and Daisy's your kin, and we ain't gonna sit back and watch you get yourself killed over the past."

One blue eye opened, focusing on him. "You're my kin." Luke didn't believe it for a minute.

Bo shrugged. "Daisy said I look just like a tintype of your grandpa Jedediah. Maybe I'm Albert's son, or Katherine's. Jesse thought I was maybe Isaac's." But it didn't matter, Bo realized. "Ain't no one can prove for sure I'm a Duke, but ain't no one can prove I ain't, neither. Daisy thinks I am, I think I am, and sooner or later, you're gonna want to claim me too. So I don't care who my ma or my pa might have been. I got you, and I got Daisy, and that's all that matters."

"Well," Luke said, "that's fine. I reckon it's okay with me if you call yourself a Duke. I got no quarrels with that." Bo smiled; Luke's eye closed again. "But I _do_ care who my pa was. And I ain't gonna rest until I get whoever killed him."


	38. Hole in the World

**38. Hole in the World**

"Well," was the assessment when the oldster gently pulled the bandage off his shoulder to look underneath. "That's impressive. That's quite a wound you've got there."

If he could have shrugged he would have. He couldn't see much of it from that close, but he could feel it. Could feel the sharp pain of the torn skin, and under that a sickening ache. So he believed it was worth that impressed little whistle that Jesse awarded it.

"Looks ugly, but Doc Cooter seems to think you're probably going to make it." Well. That would be encouraging if he wasn't too tired to care much one way or the other. "Despite your best efforts to the contrary," came the scolding.

Luke let out a breath. Probably sounded like a sigh; maybe it was. "What are you doing here?"

More scolding, just in that look alone. And the point that Pastor Jesse's eyes made was pretty valid. A sick man was in no position to question his visitors' motives; why, he ought to be glad that anyone at all wanted to come watch him lie on his back and moan.

"There's a boy at the church who I knowed all his life as Babe Sheridan that's insisting I call him Bo Duke now, and there's a young lady named Daisy that claims to be your cousin. They sent me." He'd put odds on which of them insisted harder about Jesse needing to be here. Daisy had the good sense to leave him be, but Bo, well that boy just never did quit. "They're worried about you, you know."

"I'm fine."

"I can see that," Jesse concurred, his chin dipping and a smirk playing at the corners of his lips. "It ain't so terrible, Luke, to have people that care about you. Oh, I know," Jesse said, putting the bandage back where it belonged, then stepping back. "You ain't got no use for it. You got more important things to worry about. I just figured you might want to know that there's people a-thinking about you."

The old man turned around, looking over one shoulder then the other. "Now where'd I put my hat?" he mumbled to himself. "Ah, there it is," he said when he found it on the seat of the chair in which Bo could normally be found sitting. It had been disorienting, waking up to an old, wrinkled face instead of the blonde's young and smiling one. But it seemed that the boy had finally gotten enough of sitting there watching Luke's hair grow or his skin heal or his temperature come down—whatever it was that he'd been doing. "Anyways, I can see you ain't interested in visitors, so I reckon I'll leave you to your miserable self." Ah, see now, he was supposed to say something there. To beg Jesse to stay or—he didn't even know, other than he knew a setup when he saw one. "Since there ain't nothing…" and Jesse took to patting his pockets. "Oh," he said, pulling something white out of his overcoat. "Your cousin, she's mighty sweet. Since she ain't been able to come see you, she wrote you a letter and asked me to be sure you got it." Sealed in a plain envelope, and Jesse laid it on the table next to where the water pitcher got kept. "So I'll just leave it for you."

"Jesse," was the sound of him giving in. Getting ready to ask the man to stay all full of pleases and subtle begging when he hadn't ever said he didn't want him around in the first place. It was just Jesse exaggerating about Luke's behavior the same as he always had. "Just—sit. Stay for a spell. You could," no, that wasn't going to be enough. Had to turn it around, make it a plea. "Could you read Daisy's letter to me? Seeing as I can't exactly," reach it, for starts, the man had deliberately placed it where Luke could never get to it unless he went against the doctor's orders and got out of bed. (He was getting mighty close to disobedience anyway. A couple of more days of Cletus walking in with a broad grin on his lips and a bedpan in his hand, announcing that it was time for Luke to do his business, and he was going to march out to the outhouse even if his arm fell right off of his body from the effort.) "Hold it up and there ain't enough light over here anyways." Not to mention how little he'd always liked reading. But saying that last part would probably get him lectured some more.

Instead of smiled at, which was what the old-timer was doing now. "Well now," he gloated. "Since you asked so nice." The letter got picked up again, the chair dragged closer to the bed. After a bit of grunting and a loud pop of a knee joint, the old timer sat and opened the envelope. Spent a lot of time smoothing the paper then holding it at different distances from his eyes. Eventually he pulled a pair of spectacles out of his breast pocket, then cleared his throat. Some more caressing of the paper as if the goal was to get it completely flat from where it had been folded and Luke was on the ragged edge of announcing that he'd lost interest in the contents when Jesse began to read.

"'Dear Luke,'" he started, slowly, hesitantly. "'Bo says you're doing some better. I'm glad to hear it. I wish you were all healed already, but Bo says that Doc Cooter's been telling him that it will be a while yet.' She's got such small handwriting," Jesse complained. Then took a deep breath and went on. "'I reckon I'd best confess that I told Enos some things. I'm sorry I didn't ask you first but you're in—'" hesitation there, Jesse rearranging his glasses and moving the paper around some more.

"She got taught her letters and suchlike by her ma," Luke explained. "She's got a lot more schooling than she lets on."

"'Indisposed,'" Jesse sounded out, then smiled at his success. "She's really something," the man took a break from reading to say, "Ain't she? 'You're indisposed and I felt strongly about telling him. Which means that Enos knows everything about me, including my role in the feud.'" If possible, Jesse's voice slowed even more over those last few words.

Luke sighed, met Jesse's eyes and pressed his lips together. It wasn't, he decided, his secret to tell.

"'He knows that I am Yellow-eye.'"

"And now you do, too," Luke informed Jesse.

"She's quite a lady, your cousin," the pastor put in quietly, those old, dark eyes chastising Luke again.

"Jesse," he complained. "You knowed her all her life. Don't go pretending you ain't never had no idea what she's like."

"I knowed _about_ her all her life," Jesse corrected. "I ain't seen her since she before she could walk on her own two feet. Her mother come from rich folk that was property owners, but they never got their own hands dirty a day in their lives. She didn't want her baby girl nowheres near moonshine. That's why they didn't come down to see you no more after that summer of eighty-two. Her pa and yours couldn't see eye-to-eye over brewing. Your pa didn't see no reason to stop just because Elizabeth didn't like it none. John said it wasn't too much to ask for him to refrain from doing it when they all came down and your pa said if that was how he felt, he didn't have to come down no more. Bunch of stubborn fools." Jesse shook his head at the whole lot of them. "But I wasn't no better. I figured brewing and selling and drinking was a family tradition and wasn't no one going to make me give it up. And in all them years, I ain't never seen John or Elizabeth. Or that charming Daisy that's probably sweet-talking my sexton right now."

"That girl gets what she wants," Luke agreed. "She's the one pulled me into the feud, not the other way around."

Jesse nodded like he didn't believe a word he was hearing. Then he cleared his throat, moved the letter back and forth some more until he got it the right distance from his eyes, and went back to reading.

"'I'm sorry I didn't ask you first about telling Enos, but he's very special and I didn't want to keep any secrets from him. I'm pretty sure I love him. You get better real quick so I can see you soon.' And then she finishes off with how she loves you and after that it's just her signature," Jesse added, turning the page around and holding it up so Luke could see the graceful curvature of her writing.

"I reckon it's good that she feels that way about Enos," Luke said. It was a relief, really, that she had someone. He never had figured out what she'd do whenever she got done feuding. And he'd always known she'd get done with it eventually. The girl was tough, but she wasn't meant to sleep in the dirt and drink out of streams her whole life. He wasn't exactly keen on this next part, but he was a big enough man to say it anyway. "Tell her to stay with Enos, to get married and have children or whatever it is she wants to do. Tell her not to be Yellow-eye no more. I can manage without her."

"Boy," Jesse pointed out, "you can't even manage to hold up a piece of paper on your own. I don't reckon you're in any position to send away any help that gets offered to you."

"You telling me you want her in the feud? I'm just trying to let her go easy so she can have whatever kind of life suits her."

"No, I don't want her in the feud. I don't want none of you in the feud. But I reckon that if you insist on feuding, you're going to have to take your cousins, both of them, with you. They ain't inclined to leave your side."

"You can talk them out of that," Luke accused. "You can tell them I don't need nobody and that they'd be fools to join up in something that they both already got out of. My fight ain't got to be their fight."

"I could say all them things. I don't reckon they'd make no difference. That Babe, he might only have figured himself to be a Duke for a little while, but he's got that stubborn streak in him already. And you already know about Daisy."

"Then," Luke hissed out. "Do your duty. Stand Daisy and Enos up in the church and get them to say their 'I dos'. If she's got a family of her own, she won't go off fighting with nobody. And then Bo—he could work for the railroad. He's young and strong, and he's probably a good worker. Get him a job laying track somewheres out west…" it sounded kind of nice, actually. Being somewhere far from here.

"I always knowed you was a fool," came growling out of Jesse in a tone that warned there was more. A lot more. "But I never figured you was so selfish."

"I ain't selfish, Jesse, I—" his left hand was clenching into the sheets underneath it, the only outlet he had for his anger.

"—Boy, you just listen to me," Jesse shouted over him and it wasn't fair. He didn't have the strength to holler back. "I reckon I had my hand in that. I figured I wasn't doing no one any harm, off there in the woods alone, brewing and quieting those demons inside me with liquor. I thought I had earned the right to a little self-pity, considering what the war took from me. And what it left us all with, which I figured was nothing—nothing of value." Red in the face with anger. At Luke, at himself, at his past, or maybe all of them at once. "So I just hid off by myself and did what I figured I'd earned the right to do, no matter how much Miss Lavinia wanted me to straighten out, no matter how much you needed me."

Luke hadn't needed Jesse. Oh, he'd liked him well enough when he was a little tyke, but he hadn't needed him. Not when he'd had his mother and his pa and a baby brother.

"Now you figure that between you and Bo, you drawed the shorter straw. And him, he's inclined to agree with you that having parents and losing them is worse than having none at all." Quieter then, "But I say you're selfish. That boy back there," Jesse's arm pointing as if Bo were in the next room instead of way down in town at the church with Daisy and Enos. "He ain't never had nothing to call his own. He ain't had a ma or a pa, or even a stitch of clothing that was his alone and wasn't somebody's left over something or other. All he's ever had that wasn't some hand-me-down, is his heart." Long pause there while Jesse just stared at him and he breathed as slowly and shallowly as he could. If possible, playing dead to the wild animal that lurked in Jesse's eyes. "And he's offering that to you. He's giving it to you without thought, he stands ready to go back to your farm with you and rebuild it and be your _family_, damn it," Luke didn't know for sure, but he figured that men of the cloth weren't supposed to say _damn_ in anger like that. Not that he was going to correct Jesse now. "And you're too damn selfish to accept it. Well," the old-timer said, grunting to a stand and plopping his hat on his head. "I reckon I ought to be proud of you. You're just like your Unca' Jesse." And, pretty darn quickly for such a big man, he swept himself out of the room, closing the door behind him quietly. As if he'd just sung a sweet little lullaby and now Luke was supposed to go to sleep.


	39. Most of Us Are Sad

_**Author's note:** This story was originally built around a large part of The Eagles' catalogue of songs. The lyrics were critical to the development of the story and the original draft includes small lyric epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Ffdotnet doesn't allow any lyrics anywhere in postings on their site, which is a rule intended to protect themselves and all of us from the legal repercussions of copyright infringement._

_But the lyrics are a critical part of this story, so it has been cross-posted on AO3. There is a link to the original version of the story, with lyrics intact on my profile._

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><p><strong>39. Most of Us Are Sad<strong>

Jesse said he'd been better, that Luke's color had been good and his skin hadn't been overly warm to the touch. The oldster said it had looked like he was on the mend, had patted Bo on the arm and declared that he'd done a fine job of taking care of him. Jesse was a man of the cloth and a pillar of the community; his word carried a lot of weight so he couldn't lie or even deliberately mislead, but there Luke was all the same. Face shining with sweat in whatever moonlight crept through the crack between the curtains, mouth mumbling something unintelligible, and Bo couldn't even say for sure whether the man was awake.

"Luke?" he called out across the room. Bo hadn't been sleeping, not really. In those first days, Doc Cooter used to prod him to take a bed somewhere else in the big old house, either upstairs with him and Cletus, or to find another room down here in the infirmary, because all the others had been unoccupied since Emery Potter had gone to live with his sister and recuperate there. But Bo had slept in alleys and on dirt, under awnings and under nothing but stars. A chair in a house was plenty luxurious by comparison.

In those first hours after he'd gotten Luke here, helped doc to fix him up and finally gotten him situated in this room, he told himself that staying close was a means to keep the fool from killing himself. Later he figured it was best if he was around in case Luke needed something he couldn't get for himself, and eventually he had to admit that he just liked being near Luke. It felt—unlike any of those years he'd spent at the orphanage in close proximity to other children, or those months in the feud around other fighters—perfectly natural to be at Luke's side. Effortless.

So he slept in the chair most nights, but tonight he hadn't exactly been sleeping, not yet. Close to dozing maybe, resting his eyes and nothing more serious than that. Aware that Luke was restless, that, if possible, he seemed even less comfortable than he had been before. Doc had last checked on him at around dusk, pronouncing that Luke was healing as well as he could and that the fever wasn't high enough to warrant another ice bath. Since then it had just been the two of them, Bo and Luke.

"What are you doing here?" Luke mumbled back at him, eyes open just enough for the light of the moon to catch in the wetness there. "Ain't I told you enough times to get?"

"Luke," he called again, standing up to find his left foot numb; even if he hadn't been sleeping, somehow or other his foot hadn't gotten the message. Torn between going after Cooter and getting a closer look at the fevered man when the thrashing started up over there in the bed.

"Damn it," the words, and it was hard to say whether Luke was awake or dreaming, whether the words were spoken to Bo, to a phantom lurking in the injured man's mind, or to no one at all. "Go! There ain't nothing here for you, I ain't got nothing to give you and even if I did—"

"—Luke," he said loudly, firmly and just about directly into that ear surrounded by dark hair.

"—I don't want you!"

It was getting hard not to take the comments personally, to hear them as being directed at him.

"Wake up," he said anyway, shaking Luke's good shoulder.

And then the fight began. Luke's right leg kicking up at nothing at all, his left fist smacking into Bo's cheek. Not hard, a glancing blow from the wrong angle to do any damage. A whimper when Luke tried to get his right fist into the fray, head turning back and forth as some sort of a vigorous no. Teeth bared and a growl, while Bo figured out how to restrain him without hurting him worse.

"Damn it—" could have come from either of them, but Bo got hold of Luke's bad arm just above the elbow, and pinned it to the bed. Got a hiss and a deep-throated growl for that, and Luke's left hand swung around again to cuff him in the ear.

"Stop," Bo tried to tell him, but he wasn't being heard. Not over the noise in the room, the grunts of the struggle, the complaints of the bed, their heavy breathing; not over the sound of whatever battle was playing out in Luke's head.

Another kick, a yelp of pain, and Bo fought for dominance. Luke was sick, he was hurt and then again he was strong, not to mention irrational.

The bed thumped against the wall, the springs inside protesting against the abuse when Bo crawled up into it too, wrestling Luke's left side for all he was worth while trying to protect that right shoulder.

"Dadburnit, Duke," that other name coming out of him without thought because this man that was struggling back up against him, regardless of how it had to hurt, this man was a fighter. A feuder with a grudge to bear and no tolerance for anyone in his way. "Stop it before you hurt your dang self."

Which did nothing to change the left jab that came at him, didn't slow down the kicking legs or the way Luke's head was going back and forth in that same violent no.

"Get off," Luke grunted, but he didn't have the leverage, didn't have as much strength as he thought he did.

"I ain't going nowhere," Bo explained, his right arm pinning Luke's left shoulder to the bed. Not easily, not without a few attempts to break free, but the man was flat on his back, his dominant arm hurt, his legs tangled in sheets. Bo had all the power to Luke's none, his knees on the bed, one hand holding down an arm that had to be paining something fierce, and most of his weight going to keep that other shoulder flattened to the bed. "So," breathless; Luke might be on the losing end of this fight, but he sure wasn't about to just lay back and give in. "Quit trying," one last attempt to throw him off, to get free and let that left fist fly. Bo sucked in a quick breath and held him still against every effort he made to get loose. "To make me," he gasped out.

Finally, the fight stopped and Luke went still under him. Absolutely motionless and maybe, Bo thought, he'd killed him. Made his heart give out or something, because pinning an already injured man was just asking for trouble, really. Bo's own weight sagged and his head dropped in defeat.

Then, suddenly, there it was. Luke's left hand on the back of his head, not fighting, just sort of acknowledging that he was still there and still holding him down. "Damn it, Bo," whispered so quietly it could hardly be heard, even this close. Both of them breathing heavily, Luke's chest heaving and he let his head rest on the older man's good shoulder. Just for a minute to get some air into his lungs. "You ain't got a lick of sense," Luke informed him in a cracked voice.

"You hurt?" he asked finally, pulling himself away, getting one knee off the bed, then the other until he was standing again.

Still dark, but this close he could see the way Luke's eyes rolled at the question. _Of course I'm hurt, I been shot and sick and now I've been wrestled into submission._ "I'm all right," he mumbled out instead.

"What on earth?" Cooter and Cletus arriving after all the excitement as usual. Both trying to pass through the doorway at the same time, shoulders stuck and staggering. If he and Luke hadn't been so busy listening to each other get their breath under control, they ought to have heard the heavy footsteps.

"He was having a bad dream." Of all the possible explanations for what might just have happened, that one seemed best. Easiest for Cooter to swallow and for Luke to shrug off, even if Bo figured that the two of them knew it was something different. "I had to hold him down because he kept thrashing." It had been a fight for dominance, a struggle over which of them was going to get what they wanted. For today Bo had won, and Luke had agreed to peace instead of fighting. Tomorrow they'd probably have to duke it out again, and the next day after that. Eventually Luke was going to get better, he was going to regain his strength and the fight might end differently by then. Or maybe not, maybe enough time would pass that the fool could be permanently dissuaded toward his living family and away from his need avenge the dead ones. "Is he all right?"

Doc lit a lantern and set to studying on him, gauging his temperature and checking the bandages around his injury.

"You two fools done opened up his wound again, but it don't look too bad. I reckon me and Cletus can get him cleaned up and bandaged again. And," the doc added, "give him a bath because he's a sweaty mess, but that ain't bad news, because his fever's broken."

Bo got sent to fetch fresh sheets while Cooter and Cletus tore up the old ones to re-bandage Luke's wound after they'd let him sit for a couple of minutes in room-temperature water. An hour or so later, the bed was made and Luke was settling back into it, his face neither pale nor flushed, his eyes tired but alert.

"Now you boys," Cooter was scolding, "both of you get some sleep. And no more fighting, you got it?"

"Yeah," Bo answered for both of them. "We got it."


	40. Get Over It

**40. Get Over It**

Five days. Five endless days of telling Bo everything he remembered his pa instilling in him about being a Duke, of talking about his childhood and explaining the details of farm life. Teaching skills while lying on his back and letting Bo dream his little dreams about living from the land, raising livestock. They were good dreams, worth having, so Luke indulged them even if he could no longer believe in them himself. Bo had decided he was a Duke, entitled to Duke pursuits and heck, maybe he'd even be the one to carry on the family name. (And just maybe they ought to get papers drawn up that would leave the Duke land to the boy after Luke was gone.)

Meanwhile, Luke was busy proving over and over again that keeping his right arm immobilized didn't have to prohibit him from sitting up once in a while, if only to look at the room from a different angle for a few minutes here and there. Sleeping plenty because his body was still tired, even if he had finally thrown off the fever from the infection. In those hours, when his tongue was tangled up in snoring, he figured Bo was in town pestering Daisy to tell him_ her_ tales of what it meant to be a Duke. At the very least he knew Bo visited the church at least once a day, because he came back up the hill with missives from their female cousin, telling him to get better soon so she could bring him a lemon soda-water from the apothecary. He didn't really have any interest in sweet drinks, but he always sent Bo back with word that he was improving.

Five days of nothing but drawing verbal images of domesticity for a boy that could hardly imagine what a real home was, and maybe Luke was ready for something—anything—to happen. Even if it did come in the form of two gunshots, followed by a pale and sweaty Cletus all but falling into the room where Luke was staying, crashing into Bo whose foot had gotten snagged by the leg of the chair during his effort to stand.

"It's—it's," Cletus panted, out of breath when he couldn't have run more than a few feet. "It's—"

"All right, Babe Sheridan." It was Snake Harmon, was who it was. Hollering at the Doc's house from somewhere on the outside. Hiding in the darkness and talking tough instead of being a brave fellow and just knocking at the door. "We know you're in there." Other voices around Snake's agreeing that they'd followed the boy here so he might just as well come out and confront them in person.

"What do they want with me?" Bo whispered, his eyes as big as silver dollars.

Luke waved his left hand in the air, calling for silence and just maybe reassuring Bo not to worry in a single gesture. Pushed against the bed to get properly sat up, winced at the way his shoulder complained against the movement, but cocked his ear toward the window all the same.

"You might as well come out," Snake called with all manner of bravado. Sure, he was probably crouched behind a tree, feeling perfectly well protected by its trunk and the gun in his hand. Now that Luke and Daisy were missing from the gang, things really had dropped down to the lowest denominator if Snake Harmon was leading a raid. "We ain't going nowhere until you do."

Cooter showed up right about then, slinking along the wall like he could flatten himself right into it. "I counted six of them," he informed the rest of them in the room. "They ain't kidding around."

Cletus was hiding behind Bo, who might have been the biggest object in the room. Then again, he made for a lousy shield, what with how he was the one Snake's gun was aching to shoot. Bo was creeping toward the window as though he had intentions of moving the curtains aside to peer out, and Luke was mentally counting out who would have followed Snake off on this crazy mission. Hobie, Homer, Sterling or Black-Jack, a couple of the Harper boys, maybe.

"Get on out here, Sheridan," Snake called. "And explain to us all about how your buddy Leadbelly done shot Duke. In the back; that's how I heard it."

"Where's that gun of Yellow-eye's?" Bo was asking, moving toward the small table where it had been laying ever since the first time Luke had been hauled out of bed and into that steel tub full of ice.

"You got to be kidding me," Luke commented. By then Bo had the gun belt in his hand, holding it awkwardly and proving that he'd never worn one. Must've decided he didn't need the belt because he dropped it to the floor after unholstering the gun. Made a face at it, but held it firmly in his hand anyway. "You ain't going out there," Luke asserted.

"You'd rather they came in here?"

"Bo," he said, feeling the coolness of the floorboards as his feet hit them for the first time in days. "You can't—"

"Whoa, Lukas," Cooter chimed in, peeling himself off the wall for the first time since he'd slunk in. "You ain't in no condition to be walking around or nothing."

"Get back in bed, Luke," Bo said, his eyes squinted down in determination. He didn't look so young then, not so much the annoying fool he was most of the time, and Luke didn't like it one bit. Had no interest in watching the boy leave here and get killed, or even worse, kill someone else. Didn't want to see that hard look settle onto his face and stay there.

"You ain't going out there," Luke informed him. Up on his feet with his arm cradled close to his chest, he didn't have a shirt and he wasn't wearing anything more than thin cotton pants but this wasn't the time to be worried about modesty.

"Damn it, Luke," Bo said, laying the gun back on the table. Walking right up to him, too tall, making Luke tip his head back. Some intention there to force him back into the bed but it wouldn't be fair to beat on an injured man and Bo wasn't willing to hurt him. (And that, right there, was why the boy couldn't go outside.)

"Bo, they're my guys. They'll listen to me." Or they'd figure they were seeing a ghost and either way he reckoned they probably wouldn't shoot.

"Stay back, Doc," came the warning from outside. "We ain't got no quarrel with you, but if Babe don't get himself out here by the time I count ten, we're coming in."

Bo sighed, his shoulders slumping in something like defeat. Cletus mumbled a few words under his breath and took to hiding behind Bo again.

"Watch that arm," Cooter suggested, but he wasn't going to stop him.

"Three," Snake had gotten up to out there, and that alone was impressive. Luke hadn't known for sure that the boy could reliably count up that far until just now.

His first step wasn't exactly smooth; the next one was worse. The floor seemed too close and his knees entirely too rubbery, his feet out of practice for walking from here to there. Somewhere behind the curtain of dots that started to fall in front of his eyes, Doc was saying something and Bo's head was shaking, blonde hair everywhere. Wash of black, but there was warmth at his side, and strength.

"Five," came from outside. All right, so he'd stood up faster than might have been wise, but his head had cleared quickly. Either that or Snake was counting awfully slowly, and each seemed as possible as the other.

"Come on," Bo was saying from his left side, trying to get Luke to sling his good arm around his back.

"You ain't coming with me," Luke informed him.

"Six," Snake contributed to the debate.

"Luke," Bo snapped, but it was pointless.

"You ain't," Luke insisted. "That Snake out there," who had just said seven, proving himself to be far smarter than Luke would have suspected, "is aiming his gun for you. And knowing Snake," who ought to be saying eight any second now, "he'll miss you and hit me."

There might have been a sarcastic _very funny_ mumbled at him, but he ignored it in favor of calling to Cletus.

"Oh, no," the medical assistant said, scurrying a few steps away. "No."

Because Bo wasn't wrong, and neither was the doctor. Luke really wasn't ready to march out there on his own two feet, not without someone to lean on. Too much time in a bed and a man's legs grew weak.

"Cletus," he repeated, no kindness or manners in the way he said it. A command and a complaint all in one sound and the round-faced innocence that met his eyes was almost heartbreaking. But Cletus was the only choice.

"Nuh-uh," Cletus said, but his legs brought him closer. He grabbed Luke's good arm and wrapped it around his own shoulders. "No way," he elaborated.

"Nine," Snake pointed out, quite reasonably. Time was up.

"I ain't doing this," Cletus explained in all earnestness as he led Luke toward the door.

"Wait," came the urgent call from behind them, Bo wanting them to stop when they were only a breath away from Snake's ten.

"Dang it," he complained back. "What?"

"Gun," Bo answered, trying to hand it off to him. Again, that hard look to him, like he'd become fused to the weapon and was no more than steel himself.

Luke wanted to take it from him, if only so the boy wouldn't be holding it anymore. But he hadn't ever been any good at shooting with his left hand and didn't figure now was the time to go brandishing a weapon he couldn't much use.

"Put it down, Bo," he commanded, then, "come on Cletus," he added.

"Nuh-uh," came his answer, as the doctor's assistant walked with him first out of the room, and then out the front door onto the porch.

Wash of evening air, cooler than he'd felt since shivering through his fever, fresher than it had a right to be after being confined to bed for days. And that other thing, what he forgot until it started up again. His heart beating in his chest, the flutter in his belly and dryness of his mouth.

"Ten," Snake said, reflexively, followed by, "whoa."

It was dark, and Luke had only the slightest notion of where his men might be scattered around this property. (Or maybe they were all right there behind Snake in the brush – there wasn't a decent strategist in the bunch and they might or might not have been using their weapons to cover each other, either.)

There was at least one gun pointed at him anyway; he could see the muzzle and just beyond that, Snake's pale face and the shape of his upright hat. The fool was more clown than man, dressed like a vagabond. Not that Luke had ever been fastidious like Thackeray, nor asked more of his men than basic hygiene. But he'd been away from the feud long enough now to look at Snake's attire and be forced to bite back a laugh.

Probably just nerves anyway. His heart was figuring on jumping out of his chest, his shoulder throbbed with each beat, but dang it all, he felt alive. Free, maybe.

"I ain't dead," he announced. Maybe he didn't need to, maybe he did. That face over there had him pegged for a ghost. Luke let his eyes scan the property a little more carefully than they had before. Found Hobie a couple feet away from Snake, hiding behind a pile of chopped wood. Homer might have been that blob behind the outhouse. The rest were either well-hidden or a figment of Cooter's imagination. "And Babe ain't coming out here, neither."

"After what them Hickorys done to you," Snake sneered out, and Luke reckoned that there were some detriments to hobbling out here with one arm clenched to his chest and a medical assistant propping him up by the other one. (And still mumbling about how there was no way he was going to do this. Luke would bet his eyes were closed, too.) "You'd let the doc harbor one?"

"And what about Yellow-eye?" Thick, slow voice, and Junior Harper was out there after all. A squint into the darkness and Luke could pick him out behind the old oak next to the outhouse.

"Yellow-eye," Luke started, reconsidered. Thought about what he knew and what he didn't, the messages that had been sent back and forth between the doc's office and the church and realized there was little he could say with any certainty. "I reckon you ain't got to worry about Yellow-eye."

"Duke," Snake warned and he could see how the man was liking his leadership position just a little bit too much. Stepping out from the brush with his chest out and chin raised, his gun waving in the air like it was no more than one of his fingers that he was using to gesture, except that finger was loaded and apt to go off any second now. "The way I see it, there's a Hickory in that house. And as a Porter, it's your duty to kill him. Now, you're hurt, maybe you ain't got the wherewithal to do it yourself." Oh, the underlying threat in those words. Too hurt to kill the enemy meant too hurt to lead the troops and Snake just figured himself for Luke's replacement. Cap would never go for it, but here in this moment that didn't matter a whole lot to Snake. "So best you get out of our way so we can do what you ain't going to."

"No." Cletus' interjection, tangled up in his heavy breath.

"What reason you figure you got to kill Babe Sheridan? He ain't been riding with the Hickorys for two weeks." Or more, Luke couldn't properly say when he'd quit. "More like three," because the boy had spent a week in the company of one Marshal Coltrane. "And he didn't do this to me, nor do nothing to Yellow-eye, neither."

Snake's head shook, the gun still waving in the air. "The doc must be pumping you full of some crazy medicine." Well, nothing crazier than whiskey, but he'd been self-dosing on that stuff for years. "Because you done forgot a few things. Like how them Hickorys tried to burn us alive in that brothel."

"I ain't forgot nothing," he answered back, because he hadn't. Not the brothel, not the night battle in town nor the time they'd sneaked into the camp full of sleeping Hickory men and attacked them. Tit for tat for tit and nothing ever got better, nothing made the life in this lost corner of Georgia any less desolate or difficult. Just more men died or got hurt, more mothers lost sons that might have helped support the family, more women wound up in the brothel because they had no real alternative.

Snake, of course, didn't see things the same. Didn't see anything except his former leader standing injured on a porch and blocking the way to an enemy fighter. Saw a chance for glory, probably, so he was walking tough. Mostly, anyway; he kept checking behind him to see whether he had the support of the men who had come with him.

"You reckon if you kill Babe," and that made Cletus mumble some more about how he was most definitely _not_ here now, and had _not_ heard those words, either. "It's going to do anything at all for you? You going to kill him in revenge for me? Because I ain't dead, so ain't no one going to think you done nothing but shoot a boy down in cold blood."

"I reckon he's done enough to be worth killing. He's been helping them Hickorys attack us and just because you ain't dead, that don't change nothing." Snake was sure of his logic, solid as it was, and he was getting bolder in his approach, too. "About the only thing that's changed seems to be that you ain't on the same side of this thing as you used to be."

Luke laughed. Of all his options in that moment it was probably not the wisest, but there it was anyway, bubbling up out of him. The pain tore through his shoulder like an echo of the gunshot that had brought him here. "Snake," he said, trying to catch his breath, but he figured if he had to die this might not be the worst way to go. Choking on a fit of laughter. "I ain't never been on no side of this thing."

See now, that was going to get him shot. (Or get Cletus shot, because all the things that had changed in the moments since he'd stepped out here were inside of Luke. Outside of Luke there was still reality to be considered and Snake's aim was disastrous.)

"I ain't been doing nothing but biding my time," Luke pointed out. "And you're a liar if you say you ain't been doing the same."

"What?" Snake said back to him, tried to sound stupefied by the very suggestion, but he couldn't pull it off. Snake had been Stephen once, a brat who whined when things didn't go the way he wanted them to. Somewhere inside, no deeper than the tone of his voice, he was still Stephen. "You ain't making no sense. Whatever the doc's been giving you—"

Well, that would be a fine excuse, wouldn't it? A reason for everything that he'd done so far tonight, for what he was about to do. In pain and medicated, not in control of his own faculties, and he was being handed the opportunity to take it all back. To stand aside and let his men do what they wanted, to let tonight pass and maybe a few more besides until he was healed up enough to go back to them, to lead them to other battles and victories, and to keep word of his near blasphemous statements under wraps. All he'd have to give up in return was Bo's life.

"I ain't," he announced, "got any loyalty to Cap Porter." There. Now there'd be no more excuses, no chance at retracting a single word. "And neither do you. You care about whether a mule is a horse?" Well, that part just lent credence to the notion that his words were emerging from a morphine-induced haze. "Or whether Ol' Nut Hickory ever gets Cap Porter to quit impugning his honor? You figure you even know what this feud is about?" The other men were coming out of hiding now. Advancing, not far, and not exactly threatening either. More like fascinated, like there was about to be violence and bloodshed and they wanted a closer view of it. Luke's heart liked that; pumped a little more blood through his chest, into his face and throbbing in his ears, his shoulder. "You really figure you got some stake in it?"

"I got stake in it, and you used to too—"

Laughing again, and he really was going to get himself shot. Cletus twitched at his side, and he figured if he listened hard enough he'd hear Doc or Bo drawing back the curtains in the window of the house behind him, trying to get a better view of whatever insanity was happening out here. "I ain't never had no stake in nothing," he explained. To the men he'd commanded, to Cletus and Cooter and Bo. To himself and the sky above, to the soil soaked with the blood of men before him. "About the only thing I ever wanted was revenge for the death of my kin." Oh, how those last words caught in his throat, no more laughter there. Sucked in a breath, "And where did it get me? Shot and left for dead, just begging for someone to finish me. You want to avenge what happened to me, you'd best look beyond Babe Sheridan in there, because he done saved my life."

Well, that stumped the band of fools. Ruined their whole night, really. What good was a raid when there were no bad guys to kill?

"I figured," Luke went on, since no one else seemed to have anything to say. "After what happened to my family, that I didn't have nothing to live for and that I didn't have to take responsibility for nothing I did. I earned the right to be whatever kind of jackass I wanted. Nobody and nothing else mattered. And then Babe Sheridan gone and proved me a selfish fool. You ain't going to hurt Babe Sheridan," he pronounced, slowly and clearly, because the men he was talking to were not known for their brilliance or ability to grasp subtleties. "Because he's my cousin."

"He ain't no kin to you," Snake sneered, so sure of himself.

"I say he is and you say he ain't. And there ain't a man alive who can prove either one of us right or wrong." The shock on the guys' faces around him would have been comical if he hadn't been sort of surprised himself. This, right here, was him staking claim to Bo, accepting as truth something that could never be satisfactorily verified. "So unless you really do mean to kill me right here and now, unarmed and already hurt, best you give up any notion that you have of hurting him. Because you ain't getting past me."

Cletus did not particularly care for the suggestion of shooting and cold blood (or blood of any temperature) but he was a good man. A loyal one, because he stood right where he was, holding Luke up like a fine prop. "Don't shoot him," was all he had to say on the subject; just a suggestion, food for thought. Something to consider while they all stood around staring at each other.

"Stephen," Luke said, and figured that if anything was going to get him shot, it would be that. One word, two syllables, a man's name. Unwanted intimacy and a reminder that they'd known each other since they'd been in short pants, wiping their runny noses on the sleeves of their shirts while their mothers swatted the backs of their heads and told them to stop. "You got family. Go home to them. Find yourself a nice girl and start your own family." Might as well stick him in a pulpit and start calling him Jesse for all that he sounded just like the old man. Then again, maybe for once Jesse wasn't wrong.

"You're a fool," Snake announced, like it was news to any of them here. Luke was a fool, always had been.

He shrugged in answer, one shoulder only and that was more than he should have done. "I reckon," he answered back, voice thick with the pain that was catching up to him. "Now if you ain't going to shoot me," and the way the rest of the gang was just kind of standing there, gape-mouthed with no intent to do much of anything at all, he didn't figure there'd be any shooting tonight, "I'm going back inside. Doc Cooter says I ain't supposed to be out of bed yet."

Cletus must've figured this was the best plan he'd had all night, considering the way he was helping – more like propelling – him back toward the door. Luke took one extra second to breathe in the fresh air, to feel his heart beat and to remember how good it felt to be alive, then he turned back to look over his shoulder.

"Oh, and boys," he said to the men he'd spent more than two years eating, sleeping and fighting next to, "if'n you could see clear to bringing me my horse, I'd appreciate it."

And if they didn't, he'd just send Bo out after Traveler anyway. The Sheridan boy – the Duke boy, the other Duke boy – could do it without hardly even trying, because there wasn't a better horseman in the county.


	41. Doolin-Dalton

**41. Doolin-Dalton**

"Ain't nothing changed, Bo." That was Luke, and even if she wasn't looking at him, she knew his eyes were rolling. Sitting in his corner on the bedroll that they'd rigged up for him the day he'd come here. A week ago, and his arm was in a sling, still supposed to be immobilized, but other than that he seemed okay. His color was good and he was eating well. Mostly, sometimes he got stubborn and wouldn't let anyone feed him. Couldn't do much of anything useful with his left hand and on those nights when he was too mule-headed to accept help she figured he went to bed with his stomach still growling. But as Pastor Jesse pointed out, starving a bit was good for some men. Those mornings when Luke woke up hungry enough, he'd sit still and let her spoon breakfast into his mouth, blue eyes glaring his distaste for the situation. "And besides, I ain't in no condition."

She was on the opposite side of the church, sitting in a pew and letting Enos read to her. Sort of, his words were halting and slow, too hard to make sense of, but he liked reading to her and she liked that everyone else steered clear of them when he did.

She'd been here over two weeks herself. And ever since that first night, Enos had given up his cot in the rectory to her. She had a small room downstairs and Jesse slept in the hot attic space above her, while Enos had set up camp over here in the nave of the church building itself. Sleeping on unforgiving pews as far as she knew, without the slightest complaint. In fact, if anything he seemed to relish it, to be enamored of spending his nights on hard surfaces and uncomfortable sleeping spaces. But in the days he was soft and warm, and he'd moved a little closer to her every day until now they sat just inches apart.

That first week Enos had been here alone nights, but after a standoff with Snake Harmon and some of the rest of their old gang, Luke and Cooter had deemed it wise for the boys to take refuge here as well. Besides, Luke was well enough to be cared for off the doc's premises, and Bo had been running back and forth between his newfound kin anyway. Trying to love and take care of everyone equally, and she was coming to learn that that was just who Bo was. Sweeter than anyone who'd lived the sort of life he had ought to be.

"You two quit bickering over there," she called. Didn't mean it, she liked the way they went after one another like an old married couple. Only a few weeks of spending time together and each already knew the other inside and out. "I can't hear Enos over y'all."

The boys had been trapped here without reprieve. She and Enos could come and go as they pleased, and Jesse had rounds to do, people to visit and tend to, but Bo and Luke were confined to this space. Which seemed big at first, but it wasn't, and some of that squabbling over there had to be the result of tight quarters.

"Be glad to," Luke offered. "Soon as Bo admits he's wrong."

"I ain't wrong, Luke," Bo countered, and his words got met by a left-handed gesture that suggested that whatever claim Bo had on being right was weak and unsupportable.

"Excuse me, sugar," she said to Enos, feeling herself flush at the words.

Sugar. It was, in fact, an endearment that Daisy had been raised on. It didn't mean whole lot, didn't make vows of love or promise eternity, it just offered affection. And so close on the heels of being Yellow-eye, that sort of affection still left her feeling a bit silly and a touch more vulnerable than was wise.

Half the time she missed being Yellow-eye. Like now, when she was crossing the church in those shoes that clopped clumsily on the floor. And on those days she had the urge to wander the trails like she used to, searching for a clearing in which to camp or tracking after some Hickorys.

But Luke, with his subtle-as-a-sledgehammer ways, had tried to lecture or shame or otherwise change the habits of the men he'd once led, and the streets weren't safe for Yellow-eye anymore. Just like they weren't safe for Duke or Babe, though Daisy could walk around all she wanted. Just, generally, on Enos' arm.

The Porter boys hadn't taken it well; of course they hadn't. Luke had long since lost track of how to do anything other than give orders and otherwise be surly. To scare men off with just a look, and for those who were a little too dense to get it from that alone, offer a few menacing words. Trying to actually sway the men to a fresh new point of view, one that he couldn't command them to understand, well, Luke was useless for that. Had no idea how to talk nicely to people, but Bo was teaching him. Not in any obvious way, just by arguing back, holding his own, disagreeing with a smile. For two years she'd looked after Luke with the single-minded urgency to keep him alive, and she was relieved to have Bo's help with the task. She was downright grateful, she really was. Even if she discovered a resentful streak running through her from time to time over how quickly Bo had ingratiated himself into their small family, stretching it out to fit himself inside.

Which was why her contribution to the discussion started with, "Y'all are a pair of fools." Standing over them, glowering down to see Bo's eyebrow lift at her. Just that little and she was being sassed. Hands on her hips, considering precisely how to teach the boy a lesson and almost imperceptibly, Luke's head shook. Bo's attention drawn to the movement, and he sighed. Luke's left hand came up, not much, just high enough to touch his own throat, to draw an invisible line across it. _She's dangerous_, the signal said. _Best keep your tongue still_. Bo's head dropped like a scolded schoolboy, and some sort of apology got mumbled out, even as Luke smirked up at her.

And that, right there, was why she could never hold onto her indignation for any amount of time. Because to Luke she was still Yellow-eye, still his right hand man and trusted companion.

She sat (or tried, inwardly cussing the corset that wanted to crush her ribs for the effort, Bo's gentle hand reaching out to help her down while Luke just kept right on smirking about how Yellow-eye used to plop down in the dirt with no effort or concern at all) between them.

"Luke," she said, because Bo wouldn't. He could make his own wants known and he could argue against Luke's stubbornness, but he didn't know yet. Hadn't been a Duke long enough to recognize that when it came right down to it, there was an honesty clause that came with the name. Sure, they could lead outsiders down all the wrong paths, be deliberately confusing and make other folks believe things that weren't true. But when a Duke got asked a direct question, particularly by another Duke, the answer couldn't be a lie. "Do you want to go back to the farm?"

Because that was what they'd been fighting over for a week. Bo's fervent belief that if the two of them went back to the land on which Luke had been raised, they could rebuild it and live out their days as farm boys.

"It don't matter what I want." This was the other thing Bo hadn't yet learned. Luke would do anything he could to avoid the question, he'd throw up every barrier at his disposal. "It ain't gonna work." He'd stall and stutter and fight against admitting a thing.

"Do you want to go back to the farm?" But if you stuck it out, if you pushed back against that resistance and stood your ground, eventually Luke would have to give in and offer you the truth.

"Daisy," he complained, his tone telling her that he'd already answered the question, but he hadn't and they both knew it. She raised an eyebrow and waited. Perched there, her knees grinding into the hard floor, her backside resting on those miserable shoes, but her face calm and steady. _I can wait all day_, it said. Bo cocked his head to the side and joined her in staring at Luke. Who glared at them, bright eyes flicking from one to the other. Adjusting the sling that held his right arm in place, as if it were bothering him. Fiddling with the straps and just _glaring_. Waiting, perhaps, for a flood to come rising up out of the creek (but it had been a mostly dry summer) or an avalanche to come tumbling down from the hills (but they were too deep into the valley for any falling stones to reach them) and keep him from having to answer the question. Bo fidgeted and for a moment Daisy thought that Luke might just be able to seize on that and get himself out of this tight little spot he was in, but then the youngster's instincts kicked in and he settled again, unmoving and just waiting.

"If," Luke ground out, like it was painful. Like it was a fate worse than getting shot in the shoulder then left to die. "There weren't no feud, I reckon I wouldn't mind going back." Twisting his sentence around through so many negatives that a lesser person wouldn't be able to follow it. But Bo over there was grinning victory. Luke wanted it, now it was only a matter of getting him to actually do it. "But there is a feud, and we Dukes already done tried ignoring it once." That part really did hurt him to say. Daisy reached out and stroked his good shoulder.

"So then," Bo jumped in, "we just got to get rid of the feud."

Luke's mean little bark of a laugh was his answer to that. He had tried, the biting sarcasm in that sound informed them, to accomplish that already. If he had failed (and oh, he had failed quite spectacularly) then there was no succeeding. Because he was just stubborn enough to believe that one try was enough. "That ain't gonna happen," he said in that dismissive tone that made her wish he was whole, uninjured and without pain, so she could smack him as hard as she wanted to.

"Luke," she chastised in the kind of tone that she could only dare as Daisy. Yellow-eye would have been on the receiving end of a glare that told him to hush up. "The only thing you done was to talk to them fools Snake and the Harper boys." Plus a couple of others; Luke had given her the details when he'd first arrived here at the church that same night. Not in the proper sort of condition to be moved yet, but his efforts to talk the boys out of feuding had gone so badly that he and Bo had figured moving right away was for the best not only for their safety, but for Doc's and Cletus' as well. She and Enos had gone right out the next morning to start the rumor flowing about how Babe and Duke had been holed up at Doc Cooter's, but had run off into the darkness of night. She might have said a few words that gave the impression that her cousins were on their way out to Kansas to join up with the notorious Wild Bunch gang. Not lies, precisely, just speculation. Enough to keep everyone safe from whatever crazy plan those leaderless fools might enact. (Though someone had been sympathetic to Luke, because his horse, Traveler, had been found hitched to Doc's porch come dawn that next day. Daisy would have put her money on Hobie for that small act of generosity.)

"And they ain't in no position to end nothing at all," Bo agreed. "Just to do what you said, quit fighting and go home."

"If they wasn't willing to, what makes you think anybody else would be?" Luke groused.

"I reckon," Daisy suggested, "they'd all quit fighting if'n they had to buy their own bullets." Or even run their own tabs at the saloon.

Luke snorted his disapproval. "Ol' Nut Hickory and Cap Porter ain't quit before and they ain't about to quit now. Besides, you figuring on going out there and talking sense to them?"

"No," she countered, "I ain't."

"What about Rosco?" Bo suggested, and there went Luke, laughing again. Bo's lips flattened at the sound of it, but this time Daisy halfway agreed. The marshal clearly had no interest in stopping the feud or he would have done more than keep the feuders from fighting in town.

"Rosco," Luke muttered, trying to catch his breath while rubbing at his hurt arm. Must've pulled on it painfully somewhere in all that head-tipped guffawing, and it served him right. "He'd get his fool self killed."

"No he wouldn't," Bo asserted. "He ain't so dumb, Luke. He'd arrest Porter and Hickory if Justice Hogg would try them."

Daisy shrugged her shoulders at the insanity of the notion, but Luke was over there tilting his head to the side. "What?" he was asking.

"He said that," Bo insisted. "Not on purpose or nothing." No, most of what the marshal said sounded downright involuntary. "But when I was in his jail," that's right, the poor boy had spent a week in close company with the marshal. "He came back from whatever he was doing one day with an armload of paper and a mouthful of complaints. Mostly what he said didn't make no sense, but he did keep saying something about the fat man. And Hogg, and how he wouldn't never try the right men." Bo's face went lax and he started talking out of the corner of his mouth. "Ijit," he said and it was a near-perfect imitation. "If that fat meadow muffin was smart, he'd let me arrest them two old men. They got more money than anybody else in town. Gyu," he finished off with a smirk, "instead of going after them penny-ante boys."

Luke's lip was between his teeth, his eyes staring out at nothing at all.

"Luke?" Bo said, got ignored. "You all right?"

"He's fine," Daisy said, resting her hand on the blonde's arm to keep him calm.

"He don't look—"

Luke, the fool, tried to snap the fingers on his right hand. The fingers worked just fine, but the rest of the arm didn't like the movement, and he winced.

"Told you he wasn't fine," Bo announced, but Luke's face rearranged itself into half a smile, and that put a stop to everything.

"Hogg," Luke said, and the grin spread to the other side of his mouth as well. "We got to watch Hogg." His eyes caught hers just like they had in a hundred missions before this. But it couldn't work like it always had before. Even if it had been safe for her to go scouting as Yellow-eye, she couldn't. Not anymore, not if she wanted to be Enos' girl. (And she did.) Not when he was going to become pastor someday, a pillar of the community, and it wouldn't do for the same girl he was seen courting at the apothecary to be walking around town in breeches. She hated to tell Luke no, but she just couldn't do it.

"Girl," Luke said, still staring at her with that silly smile on his face. "You've got a crooked haircut."

Again, she wanted to hit him. Instead, she tipped her head to study him. "You too," she admitted.

"Yeah, well," her cousin answered back. "You reckon you could put on a bonnet and go fetch Marshal Coltrane for us?"

A bonnet. Yeah, she could do that. She could stay in her dress, she could tolerate her corset, she could even put up with the shoes. So long as she could be Daisy and still be helpful, she'd do it. But not before she leaned forward to kiss Luke's cheek. Got surprised when his left hand reached out to pull her close, if only for a second. She started to find her feet and then noticed a pout on Bo's face, so she leaned forward and kissed him too, before going off in search of her bonnet.


	42. The Sad Café

**42. The Sad Café**

"No, Luke," Bo was insisting. Getting ignored, too, and he had no patience for that. Never had. One of the few times Lavinia had made him put his nose into the corner of her kitchen and leave it there for what felt like eternity came from just such an incident. One of the bigger boys, Charles or Roger probably, had rallied the rest of the kids into pretending that Babe Sheridan didn't exist. He'd hollered – loud then louder – and gotten nothing but silence in return until he was screaming and stamping his feet. It was then that Lavinia had taken firm hold of his shoulder and shoved him off to the edge of the room, where he'd had to stay until he got himself calmed down. He could remember the injustice of it all, and it still rankled him to this day.

Still, he didn't expect that hollering and otherwise pitching a fit would make Luke pay him any more mind than he already was.

"It could work," Jesse was saying, and leave it to the pastor to be encouraging at all the wrong times.

"No," Bo stormed. "Luke, you ain't in no condition!"

"Ijit," Rosco put in, but he was a bit behind the rest of them. Still adjusting his sluggish brain to the notion of being asked to come to the church and meet up with known members of rival gangs all at once, to cleverly plot to put an end to a feud that had dragged on for years. Add to that the information that the boy he'd called Babe Sheridan for the last seventeen years was now insisting on being called Bo Duke, and the lanterns in the marshal's upper story were burning a mite dim. (Imagine what would happen if he knew about Daisy and Yellow-eye. But some secrets, Bo figured, might never go further than the family.) "Now, you just wait a minute there, Luke Duke." Then again, maybe Rosco was brilliant. And maybe Bo was willing to take help from whichever quarter he could get it. "You're telling me, you're saying," or well, maybe old Rosco wouldn't be as useful as he could have been. "Ijit."

"Rosco," Luke said, commanding from his bedroll on the floor while everyone else stood around him, and that right there ought to have been the most obvious flaw in this whole plan. The man was doing well when he could manage to walk as far as the outhouse without help. But those eyes of his, so serious, so intense that they seemed wise even when they were as stupid as the day was long, well they held the marshal right where he was, rapt and listening. "This only works if you got the guts to see it through."

"Wijit!" There now, Luke had gone and insulted the lawman. With any luck Rosco would go about proving that he didn't need Luke Duke's help at all to solve this problem. But no, after that little outburst, Rosco's face rearranged itself from the bug-eyed look it had momentarily held. He looked hard at Luke, then smiled. "I always figured you'd be a fine addition to my posse."

"I ain't joining your posse, Rosco," Luke said dismissively, and Bo set a hand on his hip, just watching. Halfway annoyed because not so very long ago he'd been fully willing to join the marshal's posse and the notion had been summarily dismissed. Then again, what was it Rosco had said? _A lawman's got to have a nose for trouble_, that was part of it. _You've got to be suspicious and expect the worst._ True enough, those things described Luke pretty well. There were things to admire about his cousin, but his surly and cynical nature wasn't one of them, and maybe it was some sort of a back-handed compliment that Rosco didn't want Bo in his posse. "I'm just making sure you ain't going to chicken out on us once we get this thing rolling."

"Gyu." The marshal's eyes narrowed as he considered the wound that had just been inflicted upon his pride. "You ain't got to worry about me. I'm going to do my part, but Babe there—"

"Bo," came the automatic correction from at least three different directions; by now Daisy and Luke had been set straight so many times that they muttered it, too. Jesse stood a pace back from the rest of them and just shook his head. _Thick as thieves_, that little smile on his face said.

"Ijit! Bo there is right. You ain't got but one good arm."

Bo raised his eyebrows at Luke, got a sneer of annoyance in response.

"I don't need no arms at all," Luke informed them. "All I need is my mouth," and Daisy caught a snicker behind her hand at that one. "And my brain," he finished with a glower.

"Well then," Bo cut in. "We really are in trouble." And that mean stare moved itself from their girl cousin to him. Which was fine, he had a smile to counter it and a pat, gentle as he could manage, to Luke's healthy shoulder. _All in good fun_, it said. "I still don't like you going in there alone, though," he asserted. "And I still don't see why you figure you got to do it."

Because the plan was – stupid. Pointless, foolish without purpose. Luke was going to see Cap Porter, to officially resign from the feud. It was about the most ridiculous notion Bo had ever heard of. No one resigned; they died or they disappeared or they got snared by a respectable girl who married them and then laid down the law about how they were never to go out and get themselves shot at again. Luke had already done more than most; he'd told his men to quit fighting and where had it gotten him? Nowhere good; that was Bo's assessment.

"Rosco can tell you that," Luke informed him.

"I can?" the marshal stammered. "I can," he tried again, but the inflection change did nothing for that confused look on his pink face. "Ooo-oo."

"You already said it once, Rosco," Luke reminded him. "About how you ain't going to be able to get no charges to stick unless you got good evidence."

"Evidence!" Rosco echoed, like this plan was starting to make sense to him, but that wrinkle that had taken up residence right between his eyebrows didn't get any smaller or less concentrated.

"I don't see how you're going to get evidence of anything at all," Bo complained. "Out of Cap Porter, or why you got to go there alone."

"I ain't going to be alone," Luke pointed out. "Daisy's going with me."

"Daisy!"

"Me?" the girl asked, and Enos, who had been sitting about five paces away pretending to study his Bible, but with one ear firmly cocked in their direction, fidgeted noticeably. "What do you got in mind, Luke Duke?" the girl asked, her eyes squinting.

"Now, now," Luke said and he'd be holding his hands up in surrender if the right one wasn't still mostly incapacitated. "I ain't talking about... him." Yellow-eye, but Luke couldn't say that, not in front of Rosco. As befuddled as the marshal could get, he was plenty smart enough to put two and two together and get somewhere in the general vicinity of four. "That'd be too dangerous. For both of us. I mean Daisy, taking me in Doc Cooter's wagon."

"I can't see what good that'll do," Bo groused, and somewhere over there to his left, Enos was nodding his agreement, while the wrinkle on Rosco's forehead dug itself in just that much deeper. Daisy, however, seemed perfectly content to let Luke finish explaining himself.

"She's going to be my long lost cousin." Oh, this plan was just brilliant. "Who brings me out there to say my goodbyes before I go back to stay with her. She ain't going to do nothing but sit in the wagon and wait for me."

Hard to believe that this was the infamous Duke, the great strategist and brilliant fighter that had been a high-ranking member of the Porter gang. Because there wasn't a single logical element contained in this plan. "So what's the point in having her there? Why can't it be me? You've got to figure he already knows about me. Your boy Snake must have already said something about that."

"And that's exactly why it's going to be Daisy. Don't nobody know her, and she ain't going to get nobody's hackles up. She's just going to take me over there than sit out in the wagon. With a gun hid in her skirt. Which she ain't going to use unless she's got to." The girl nodded at that, like it was an old and familiar role for her, and he reckoned that by now it was. All except the part about the skirt, that was. "Don't worry, Bo. You're going to be there, too. Just in the woods, on Traveler. In case I need to make a quick escape."

Well. That was better. The plan was still pointless, but it was getting less dangerous by the second. "I still don't see why you got to go at all. And how you're going to get any evidence from him."

Luke laughed, his eyes brighter than Bo had ever seen them. Strange man, sour and surly most days and then downright gleeful over the smallest of things.

"That past's easy," he answered, then paused. Waited until everyone had their full attention on him, because this right here was an important lesson that he was going to impart. "If you want someone to tell you something, you just got to make a big old production over how there ain't nothing you want less," big old devious grin, "than to hear that very thing."


	43. Nightingale

_**Author's Note: **Hey y'all. A longer section and an action scene told from Rosco's POV. I don't usually let him narrate action scenes because he's so easily befuddled, but in this universe he's a little more reliable. Hopefully you'll be able to follow him._

_Thanks for reading!_

* * *

><p><strong>43. Nightingale<strong>

Hard to say which of those two boys was the bigger fool, the Duke boy or… the other Duke boy. (See, now, that just proved his point right there. A whole lifetime of being Babe Sheridan, and suddenly the blonde youngster figured he had the right to demand that everyone start referring to him as Bo Duke. And, somehow or other, he had garnered the support of Luke Duke to that cause.) And there they were, the both of them, plotting away and leaving Rosco out in the cold.

Or out in the heat, because it was hot as blazes. Sundown, or just about, and the baked land all but smoldered around him as he squinted against the sideways light. Outside, because he couldn't be inside. At least that was what Luke Duke had said.

Once, and not that long ago, he had offered the boy the opportunity to enforce laws, to have honor and dignity as a member of the marshal's posse. And the boy had proved himself worthy of the offer by managing to keep peace during the governor's visit; an amazing feat considering he'd been shot and was, by all reports, halfway delirious at the time.

But Duke had always figured himself too smart or too independent to be a lawman, and he'd turned Rosco's offer down. Which had somehow or other led to the marshal's current conundrum, wherein Luke Duke planned all the strategy and gave all the orders, leaving the duly constituted law of the county out in the… heat, waiting.

The near-fit that the Sheridan-Duke boy had pitched about the little excursion out to see Cap Porter had been just so much wasted worry. Luke had encountered no trouble at all, give or take the fact that Cap hadn't precisely accepted his resignation.

"A rest," Cap had apparently told him. "To get well, a little hiatus for you." No amount of insistence could convince old Porter otherwise, or make him let go of the boy who had been so crucial to whatever successes he felt he'd achieved in the past two years. Which was when the information started spilling out of the man like cheap whiskey on a Saturday night. And Luke Duke, he'd collected every drop. (And then shared it out sparingly, like a truly miserly drunk. Or just a boy that was used to giving orders and getting them obeyed. And what sort of lawman let himself be put in the position of taking orders from a boy like that? Rosco cussed himself for a fool.)

A whistle. That was supposed to be his reprieve from this quiet hell, his cue to act instead of standing here by an open window next to a closed door, just about choking on pipe smoke. Hot outside, hot inside, and it had been a pretty reasonable guess that the window would be flung wide. He was supposed to be listening just in case some idle chatter slipped out through it, but they'd all known that Hogg was too smart for that. Sure, he liked the breeze to blow through what little hair still hung there in frizzy clumps on the side of his head, he liked to let in the fresh air and make the rest of the world stink like the tobacco in his pipe, but he wouldn't stand next to a window and babble all his secrets out into the world. Nope, Hogg and Porter were both in that room that hid under the stairs of the saloon, in the deepest recess of the structure and plotting quietly. Just like Luke had learned they would be during his meeting with Porter. And Rosco was standing outside the back door, being nothing more important than food for the flies while both of those boys – the one Rosco had taken in under his own roof (the jail that was) and fed from his own mother and sister's cooking, and the one to whom he'd offered a fine, law-abiding job – were on the inside. Of the saloon, of the plan, of everything that Rosco was outside of.

A whistle and at first it was supposed to be the call of a red-winged blackbird that he was awaiting. Some kind of a too-eee sound that Luke could make and Babe (_Bo_, his mind echoed, just like the boy always did) could answer him back. But Rosco couldn't hear the difference between their whistles and the bluebird call that Daisy could make, and then there was the whippoorwill that Bo did next and Pastor Jesse chimed in with a bobwhite, and it had all been too much.

"What," he'd asked, standing there in the middle of the church where they'd hatched this little plot, "if a real bird chirps and I think it's you?"

The laughing had started then; Bo's high and giggly (and it was no wonder everyone still called him Babe), Luke's loud and raucous, Jesse's catching like hiccups in his throat and Daisy's polite and quiet behind her hand.

"Y'all stop it," Enos had piped up, red in the face. Putting his Bible down for once and getting to his feet to make his point known. "This here," he'd announced, full of righteous indignation, "is the duly constituted law of Dade, and it ain't right to go laughing at him. He gives his soul to what's decent and good, and he looks out for all the rest of you, even when you go off and make his job harder by feuding." It was as much as any of them had ever heard the boy say, and it had left them all, even Rosco, dipping their heads in shame.

"Thank you, Enos," he'd mumbled, not even sure if he should.

"That's all right, Marshal," the boy had chimed back at him with a grin. "I always figured if I wasn't going to be a man of the cloth, I'd want to be a lawman like you."

Well. That was a horrifying thought, and the whole county could be grateful that Enos had been called to the service of the Lord.

Duke (except he had to think of him as Luke now, since Babe also insisted that he was a Duke these days), looking wretched after getting scolded by the meek Enos Strate, had come up with the alternative. Rosco was to wait until he heard the whistling notes of the first two bars of _Dixie_.

But those boys had no idea what they were asking of him. Making him pass time out here with only half the plan in his head, listening so hard for their signal that every time a bird called out, he found himself giving back an uncontrolled _ij_ in response, then slapping both hands over his mouth in hopes that his voice had not carried inside. It took an awful lot of self control not to go bursting in before he was meant to, took restraint and concentration and—

Was that a whistle? A loud one, but was it _Dixie_? Or maybe something else, some other tune that he knew but couldn't remember the name of, and he was trying to call it to mind when a shadow loomed. A fuzzy head peeking over edge of the roof of the saloon, and the whistling stopped.

"Rosco," came the hissed whisper from overhead. Too much light from the wrong direction and he couldn't tell who it was, but there were hand gestures, frantic and annoyed, telling him to go, go, go, to get inside because he had just missed his cue.

The door swung the wrong way, or he'd misjudged it. It should, he felt, have opened out, but when he turned the knob and pulled, it just rattled against the sill. Seemed like poor construction to him, some lazy builder who'd put the door in backwards and never come back to fix it. Which meant Rosco had to push in instead of pulling out, and though at first the effort was no more successful than pulling had been, the door gradually shoved an inch or two.

Then, suddenly, resistance was gone and he just about crashed into the floor nose first when the door swung wide. Ruckus inside, most of it in the saloon itself, but right up close there was a squealing whine coming from where Justice Hogg was trapped in the confines of this cramped room with the six-foot plus Babe-Bo-Sheridan-Duke blocking his way through the doorway into the saloon, and Rosco right here at the back exit. Giggling glee from the blonde boy, whose hands were out in front, just about begging Hogg to come sliding into them like a greased pig. Beady brown eyes looking at one of them and then the other, the judge assessing his chances and he could have been a schoolboy then. A brat caught stealing candy from the apothecary shelf instead of a highly respected member of the community. Trying to pick a direction in which to run when both options were blocked, and it looked like catching him was going to be easy. Just one-two steps and Rosco could draw his gun, but then the boy blocking the other door hollered.

"You want to hold real still," Porter menaced from where he'd come up behind Bo. Hidden in some recess of this space, probably that dark corner under the staircase, and he'd waited until right now to emerge, ice-blue barrel of his revolver digging into the creamy skin of the youngster's baby-soft cheek. Old Cap had found himself an oversized human shield and he meant to use it to get himself out of this little predicament. Most days it wasn't obvious, but right about now Rosco could see perfectly well that the man had once been a soldier in a war. "And leave your gun in its holster."

Crazy. Cap must always have been that way, how else could he have held a grudge for as long as he did? Still, it had never been so obvious as it was in this moment, when he was backing out of this tiny enclosure and into the greater space of the saloon, with hostage in tow.

"Gij," Rosco complained.

"I swear," Hogg said, and his eyes were as round as marbles, "I didn't have nothing to do with that." _That_ being, of course, Porter's grand exit. Then again, the justice had no problem waddling out in Porter's wake.

Into the saloon, where things were moving fast and it seemed like the wisest choice would be to hide behind an upended table. Give or take the fact that as the marshal of these parts he didn't have that luxury, which left him quietly mumbling prayers that Babe-Bo had done what he promised. Seemed the boy had a way with the ladies of the evening, and had their sworn allegiance in the effort to thwart any attempts at genuine bloodshed. They had been enlisted to clandestinely divest any and all patrons of their guns by whatever sneaky, female methods they had at their disposal. First glance proved they had been largely successful; there were bottles crashing into walls and fists mashing into faces, but the only men brandishing guns were Doc Appleby behind the bar, and a still-backing Cap Porter.

Hogg was scuttling to the corner like a cockroach in the light of a lantern, Doc Davenport was bouncing down the stairs two at a time, and the girls, oh the girls were everywhere. Tangled up with the men who were fighting for no other reason than that there was a fight to be had. Why, just look at that clump of Hickorys over by the bar, wrestling around with a couple of meaningless cowboys while Cap Porter was moving in their midst, unmolested.

His attention got drawn to the sudden, heart-stopping crash of shattering glass and, "Uh-uh," Enos Strate was scolding. Porter wobbled notably in the process of turning to face this new assailant who had hit him from behind with a whiskey bottle. The gun clattered to the floor while Enos explained, "No fair using another man's body to protect your own."

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad to have that boy in his posse after all.

Bo bent for the gun and Porter turned on his heel to hit Enos. Glancing blow to his chin, but it knocked him off balance. Giving up on the gun, Bo stretched his long arms out to halfway catch Enos. Porter took advantage of the distraction to make a beeline for the door, leaving behind the two stumbling and toppling men.

Rosco was faced with a fundamental crisis. Go after Porter or corner Hogg. He could only catch one, and the other would get away.

"Yahoo!" That was Doctor Cooter Davenport, the man upon whom the entire town's health relied, diving into the yaw and sway of the fight, picking an opponent at random and taking him on. Behind came Cletus, Doc's assistant and a distant relation to Hogg, trying to figure out whether to fight the men or flirt with the ladies. Luke Duke was trying to protect his injured arm while making his way through the disaster toward Hogg, and Rosco figured his best bet was to stop this thing. Porter and Hogg could wait, they could be arrested tomorrow and the evidence that had been collected here tonight would still be plenty to convict them. Justice Petticord stood ready to try them both, in fact had scolded Rosco for not coming to him sooner. _A law is a law_, the Morganville judge had tsked. _You got a legal problem, you got to confront it_.

So the marshal did what any good lawman would do. He shot the ceiling.

"All right," he hollered, but the brawling didn't stop or even pause for breath. "You all just decease and assist." Too much noise, rattle and clatter and clank, and his words were drowned out. But Doc Appleby behind the bar, he took the hint. Fired his own rifle into the boards overhead. Aimed toward the front of the building where there were no rooms above them, because even if the girls were all supposed to be down here, he didn't want to accidentally hurt someone just for being in the wrong place.

"You really ought to put a stop to this," got huffed and puffed into his ear.

"Ijit! Cletus!" he hollered, though it got instantly lost in the din of the place. "You shouldn't sneak up on a man of the law like that! Why, I could have killed you."

"Not with your gun pointing up at the ceiling like that," Cletus informed him, and Rosco made a pact with himself right then and there to never get hurt when Doc Cooter was out of town. The last thing he wanted was for the slack-jawed bumbler standing next to him to treat any wound he might ever get.

Cletus' breath sucked in and he winced, probably in response to the punch Doc Cooter just sustained from Dobro Doolin. Not a lot of meat on Dobro's bones, but he was wily. Whereas Doc Cooter was built solid and moved slowly. It was a bad match, as far as fighting partners went, and Cletus was doomed to wince a few more times.

Rosco shot the ceiling again and got nothing but splinters for his effort.

"You ain't never gonna get their attention that way," Cletus informed him casually.

"Shouldn't you be fighting or something?" Rosco screamed back at him, all reflex. Just wanting the annoying fool away from him even if it did mean yet one more fistfight to break up.

"I was," Cletus pointed out, rubbing his jaw. "Didn't much care for it. That's why I say you ought to end this thing. And you ain't never going to get them to pay you no mind if you keep shooting off that gun. Heck, to these boys, a gunshot is like a lullaby. If you want their attention, you got to do this."

"Wha—" A shrill whistle from between Cletus' teeth cut him off. The urge was there to plug his ears, but with a fist full of gun, the risk wasn't worth it. The slightest false move and he wouldn't ever have to worry about whether Bo was Babe, whether Dixie was a red-winged blackbird, or whether Cletus was the most irritating man he'd ever met in his whole life, because he'd wind up with a hole in his head. "Cletus!" he scolded, then realized he could hear his own voice quite clearly. Could walk through this place without fear of getting hit if he wanted to, because it had all stopped; the punching, the hollering, the shattering of bottles was all frozen as everyone turned to stare hard at Cletus. Apparently the noise was just as annoying whether you were standing next to the man or a couple of dozen feet away.

"Got their attention, didn't I?" Cletus mumbled in a too-loud whisper, smug smile playing at his lips.

"You boys," Rosco called out, ignoring the self-satisfied fool to his right. "Quit it. Just quit it now."

"They already quit it," Cletus pointed out.

"Ijit, Cletus! Of course they quit it, I can see they quit it, just—" so many boys trying his patience tonight and he was going to go hoarse if he had to yell at them one by one. Best to turn away from the doctor's assistant and go back to addressing the crowd. "All you boys, you got until the count of ten to be gone, or me and my posse," none of whom were here, not even close to here, but that didn't matter. "Are gonna lock you up, and we ain't gonna let you out, neither."

Funny how well that always worked. Anyone with smarts would figure that there was only one Rosco and about thirty times as any fighters in the room. It shouldn't have taken a banker like his daddy to add it all up and see that there was no way for the marshal to get them all. But feuders weren't thinkers; he'd known that all along. They loved their freedom more than anything else and they took his little threat to heart as they started to trip over each other in search of the door.

"Ah, ah, ah!" That was Pastor Jesse, emerging from the shattered front window where he'd just climbed in from the porch. Heavy man, not nimble at all, but it didn't matter, because he had a rifle in his hands and he held it like he might just use it, too. Besides, the man he was chastising was even less nimble – Justice Hogg had been considering a clandestine escape, but now had his back against the wall, hands up. Muttering something about how it was illegal to hold a judge at gunpoint, but no one was listening to his complaints.

Little skirmishes broke out here and there, but Rosco figured those were okay, as long as they were all in the name of getting out of here. He had Hogg, tomorrow he'd go and round up Porter and his purpose here would have been accomplished without anyone getting hurt.

He was just getting really snug and comfortable in his silent self-congratulations when Ernst Ledbetter raised his hand to one of Mabel's girls, the one with the dark curls that used to spend an awful lot of time with the notorious Duke. One of the gemstone-named ones, and Rosco never could keep all of them straight.

Maybe the Ledbetter boy was just trying to get past her, maybe he cocked his fist with intent. Didn't matter, because Luke Duke hurdled chairs and climbed one armed over a tipped table to be there, to smash his left fist into the other boy's face. A lousy, off-balance punch, but it served its purpose. Ledbetter forgot all about the girl and turned on Duke, ready to hit him or just plain take him down, and Rosco was already wincing in sympathetic pain. Just about closed his eyes and turned his head away, but a flash of motion caught his eye. Blonde hair flying, long arm cocking back, then a nasty little popping sound and Ledbetter stumbled back, holding his eye. Getting his feet under him, setting himself for another go at Luke or Bo, maybe making his mind up between the both of them and he wasted precious seconds. Another one of the Sheridan-Duke boy's fists caught him in the stomach, making him double over.

Luke figured to finish the fool off, his left arm coming back to take another swing, but he got pushed off balance when Bo's hip knocked into his. Stumbling and fumbling, not quite in control of his own body and the Duke boy must have hated it. Must have been angry as all heck to be reduced to the same sort of clumsiness that plagued both Enos and Cletus, must have wished for something, anything at all to keep him from needing Rosco's help to find his lost balance.

And by the time he did, that sweet little Sheridan boy, the same one who had sat on Rosco's cot and said he didn't know where to go if he had to leave the jail, the very boy that any woman in town would give her eye teeth to care for, had leveled a punch that knocked Ernst Ledbetter out cold. Which left Rosco pretty much in the company of friendly faces – the team that he'd come here with, Doc Appleby, Mabel and her girls, and the lone troublemaker. Hogg. Squealing like a stuck pig.

"Damn it, Bo," Luke cussed. Steely blue-eyed stare that had made many a man start backpedaling with hands raised, mouth promising all manner of obeisance if only Luke could see his way clear to not pumping him full of lead. But Bo matched him for it, hard stare and no flinching.

"You're hurt," he answered back, chin raised with not the slightest sign of fear. "And I ain't going to let you go undoing all that hard work me and Cooter did in keeping you alive, just so you can get a little revenge."

The two boys set to bickering over whether Luke's actions were an effort to be honorable and protect the girl (who had her own words to say on the subject, and they weren't necessarily favorable toward Luke) or had more to do with a bullet from Ledbetter's gun having embedded itself into Luke's shoulder, and Rosco figured right then and there that Bo earned himself the right to be called a Duke. Because only a man as fool-stubborn as a Duke would stand up to another Duke when he was angry.

Pastor Jesse nudged Hogg over toward where Rosco stood as the younger men that were scattered around the place shook out sore knuckles or rubbed parts of themselves that had taken punishment.

"Too bad Porter got away," Cletus was muttering to no one in particular when the door to the saloon swung wide and the man in question came stumbling back in, stepping cautiously with his hands up in the air.

"Wha—" Rosco said, but he didn't get very far.

"Daisy!" Enos was squeaking, like his voice hadn't changed years ago. "Are you all right?"

And right about then Rosco could see it clearly, how the girl was behind Porter, holding him at gunpoint and telling him to _march, mister_. As if she had the authority, as if she wasn't just a tiny slip of a thing that had no right to be holding a gun.

"Ijit!" Rosco said, pulling and tugging on his own revolver, taking a few tries to get it free of the holster. "You just, you hold it right there!" he hollered. At the Porter patriarch, at the girl, at the men around him who were all surging forward to help with the prisoner. Even those Duke boys stopped bickering amongst themselves long enough to laugh.

"Relax, Rosco," that smart-mouthed Luke Duke had the gall to say to him. "Miss Daisy there will take care of business for you."


	44. Peaceful Easy Feeling

**44. Peaceful Easy Feeling**

"Daisy," wasn't a command, wasn't telling her what to do. It wasn't even begging, pleading, whining. It was just what it was. Serious, maybe nervous. Scared for her. Which was almost funny, after all the things she'd been and done, after she'd proved herself so capable of handling danger.

She had been, after all, the one who had caught Cap Porter and brought him to whatever form of justice he was likely to face. Hiding on the roof of the saloon in a skirt well above her ankles, wearing practical shoes and no corset, waiting for the signal from Luke. Who had gotten it from Bo, who got it from Mabel, who got it from Chastity, who had gotten it from Cooter himself. A series of hand gestures and innocuous sounds passed from the second floor of the saloon to the first, then out the front door and up onto the roof, so she could whistle _Dixie_ to Rosco like sweet nothings in his ear. The meaning conveyed had been simple. Doc Cooter and Enos, two reliable witnesses with no feud affiliations, had spent enough time with their ears glued to the heating grate in the floor of the saloon's second story to overhear Hogg and Cap plotting. To get the details of how the judge was on the take and Cap Porter was ensuring that young boys got pulled into illegal activity at a near-constant rate. And since the doctor and the sexton could very reliably testify before Justice Petticord, it was time for Rosco to go on in and make an arrest.

Very simple plan, straightforward and every part of it had gone wrong. Which was what happened when you left this soft of thing to amateurs. Like Cletus and Cooter and Doc Appleby. And Rosco, who somehow figured that being marshal meant something, but it didn't. Not next to spending night and day feuding, hiding out in the woods and living off the land while never, ever letting down your guard. But where the men had failed, she'd taken up their slack, mending and tending what they'd broken until it all ended with Cap Porter being marched back to the saloon from where he'd tried to disappear down the alley. And it was her gun that had tamed him.

Maybe she was half feral, maybe she always had been. Maybe she wasn't entirely ready to give up her wandering ways, and then again, maybe she was a fool.

"I love you, Enos," was more than she had ever said to the man. She'd shared the sentiment with Luke, then gotten counseled about it by Jesse (and when she next saw her father she was going to have words with him about what he thought he was doing, never introducing her to the sweet old man who was Grandpa Jedediah's cousin), but Enos had always seemed too fragile and nervous to handle the information with any grace. He'd probably trip and knock his head on a hard pew or break out into a rash or – but he didn't. The corners of his mouth flickered around a little until the figured out how to smile, and a tiny little hee of a giggle slipped out. Nothing more.

But then again, this was a serious discussion, not a giddy vow of love.

"I—" _love you, too_, was what Enos wanted to say. What he was supposed to say, what he'd have to be an impolite clod not to say. If he was talking to the charming girl she looked like, the person he could have fooled himself into believing she was before that crazy night at the saloon.

"I don't figure," she jumped in, looking down at the floorboards between them. The two of them stood about fifteen feet from one another; not a huge gap in practical terms. She could cross it in three steps except for that abyss. The invisible one, right there in between them. "I'm ever going to be exactly the kind of girl," oh, sure, to anyone else this would just be the floor of the church, as firm as it had ever been. But Daisy was too smart to fall for that illusion or any other. She knew when the ground was less than solid, when slopes slipped down into holes that could never be climbed back out of. "That is exactly proper. Nice and sweet and perfect."

"I ain't asking you to be perfect Daisy." And he wasn't asking her to marry him, either. Maybe she was jumping the gun and maybe she was worrying too much about something that wasn't that important, at least not yet. "I'm just asking you to be safe." Deep wrinkles on his forehead, a worried little twitch to those eyebrows, warm eyes beneath them looking sad. A man with a face as sweet and open as Enos' should never look sad. "And you ain't never going to be safe unless you—"

Stop acting like a man.

Because the arrest of Justice Hogg and Cap Porter (as well as Ernst Ledbetter, who was too low-ranking to matter much) hadn't put a sudden and tidy end to the feud. It had slowed things down, sure. But there were still half-crazed men, made that way by years living in the middle of a fight, that kept it up. Shooting each other in the woods or meadows between this farm and that. Town had become safe enough even for Luke to walk around without being endangered. But in the outskirts, things were still pretty rough.

"I just don't want you being Yellow-eye no more," Enos asserted.

Luke was still half-crazy, too. Not exactly bent on revenge; he'd halfway laughed at the notion of trying Ledbetter for the crime of shooting him in cold blood. _He was just doing his job_, the fool had said. _You going to arrest a miner for digging out coal?_ (Bo hated when he said things like that and had sworn if it took a lifetime he'd get Luke to stop acting like it was perfectly fine that Ledbetter had shot him.) But there was a tension in the Luke's posture, a sense of unfinished business, a yearning for the woods and the wilderness and freedom. The sort one couldn't find while recuperating in a church.

Daisy worried about him, about what he'd do when that shoulder healed up enough for him to throw a punch or shoot a gun. But she'd never been much good at taming his wild side. The two of them were too much alike for that.

Somehow or other, Bo was managing what she, as Yellow-eye and as Daisy, had never quite been able to. Not so much calming Luke down as refocusing his energies. The blonde's dreams of farming, raising horses and learning the whiskey trade were infecting Luke, taking hold in his heart and slowly blooming into something the former Porter lieutenant hadn't known for a long time: hope.

Sometimes she could get sideswiped by a pang of jealousy about that. All the years she'd spent trying to bring Luke back from the edge and then Bo had stepped in with his innocence and effortless charm, and done what she'd never quite managed.

And then there'd be those quiet moments with Luke, reminiscing about the woods and living off the land, and she'd know. She and Luke shared a bond that Bo couldn't tear apart, and wouldn't even if he could. Because the blonde boy loved his finally-found family with his whole heart, and she was one of the ones he loved best. He'd never hurt her.

Besides, she had more pressing worries. Like Enos there before her, halfway broken-hearted over her wild ways.

"I ain't got to be Yellow-eye," she said. Laughed then, because it was true and it was so simple. She didn't have to be a man. "If we could just – get away sometimes. If we could go out and camp, maybe a couple times a year. And hunt." Or at least shoot at targets.

"Well, I don't know, Daisy," the church sexton and future pastor said to her. "Ain't none of the proper men would take their wives," his cheeks flushed up the kind of color that might indicate that a quick trip to Doc Cooter's was in order, if she hadn't already learned that he was prone to such a display. Even so, she gave a passing thought to whether she ought to hitch up old Jesse's wagon. Except it wasn't here, because the oldster had taken the boys out to get some supplies at the General Store, leaving her and Enos here alone. "Out into the woods with them. Hunting or otherwise."

"Well," she said, teasing smile coming across her lips because when she thought about it, she liked Enos pink. Flushed, alive, healthy-looking. "You got to take me with you, because you ain't never hunted a day in your life." And she could shoot a mosquito off a man's arm without even breaking his skin.

"I don't know," Enos answered, but his eyes were a lot more sure that his tongue, bright with hope as they were.

"Besides," she added. "If you was to marry me," which seemed an awful lot like her doing what Enos was supposed to. Another thing that was probably all wrong about her when it came to being the wife of a future religious leader of the town. But she'd already admitted that she'd never be the perfect mate. "And then we went out hunting together, well, maybe them other women would realize what they're missing and start going on hunting trips, too. Maybe we'd start a whole new fashion."

"We," Enos marveled. "We." And somehow got up the gumption to take a step toward her. "I like the sound of that. We." One more step, and he reached out for her hand. All very chaste, but it was the two of them touching. The rest could follow.

"Then you'll marry me?"

"Yes!" he burst out. "Daisy Duke, of course I'll marry you." Then he leaned forward and kissed her. Gently, and on the cheek.

Which was cute. Adorable, really, but they were engaged now. So she grabbed the back of his neck. fingers tangling in the short hairs there, and pulled him back down for a real kiss. On the lips and lasting longer than the average hymn took to sing, and when they finally parted, the poor fellow looked like he was about to faint. Which of course meant she absolutely had to wrap her arms around him, just in case.

"Good," she told him. "You said you'd marry me, and you can't go back on it now. Because I got one more thing I got to tell you." She could give up being Yellow-eye, and her masculine ways, or trade them off for occasional long hikes and hunting trips. She could stop spending all her time fussing over Luke and dedicate herself to married life with the man she loved. She could even tolerate a corset. "You'd best get yourself another pair of boots." But she could not—"Because I'm going to be wearing them ones you got on right now."—walk around in a woman's shoes.


	45. Best of My Love

**45. Best of My Love**

Luke loved her. His eyebrows told the tale that his mouth never would, knitted together in the middle, leaving creases across his forehead. Hands tearing up sheets and eyes staring out at nothing.

At least, Bo decided, his arm seemed to be working just fine after the past couple of months he'd spent healing at the church. No wincing when he yanked it this way or that to get the sheets into narrow enough strips for Doc Cooter's liking.

"Ah, _ooh_," echoed throughout the doctor's old house and there went those eyebrows again, all twitch and worry.

"She'll be fine, Luke," he consoled without any genuine knowledge that he was speaking the truth. But he also had no reason to believe he was wrong. "Women have babies every day." At least he figured they did and most of them survived it, too. Give or take the fact that his own mother might have perished giving birth to him.

"They do not," Luke answered back, but he was only being contrary. Letting his apprehension pop right out of his mouth as dissent.

Daisy had warned Bo about this. Or at least planted the kernel of a notion into his brain. _Be careful when it comes to saying anything at all about Mary Kaye Porter_, she'd advised. _Luke gets… sensitive about her._

Sensitive. Funny word to describe the man who still had a reputation for ruthlessness in these parts. And now most folks thought of him as immortal, too, what with him having been presumed deceased for at least a few weeks before the town learned that he was still around and in remarkably good condition for a dead man.

But yeah, Luke was sensitive about Mary Kaye. The kind of sensitive that could get a man punched for saying the wrong thing. It was all there in the tension of those eyebrows.

Rain splattered on the east windows; it was a soggy, gray fall day with wind sweeping down the mountains to make it feel twice as miserable. His skin prickled up against the chill and half of him wanted to wrap himself up in one of the sheets and go off to find a spare bed in this place. He'd been keeping Luke company all night.

"She's alone now," Luke had given as his reason for not only being the one to transport Mary Kaye here to Cooter's place, but staying until her baby got born. And maybe Bo could understand that well enough. He knew what alone felt like, and he reckoned not being alone was unarguably superior. Especially when the pain was as awful as Mary Kaye's sounded. (Then again, when Luke had been alone and in that kind of pain, he'd asked Bo to kill him rather than keep him company. Maybe it wasn't so much the fact that the girl needed a companion to stay with her as the one volunteering to be that companion that was so surprising.)

But whatever Luke seemed to lack in consistency, there was no faulting his logic. The girl had no one else to turn to, which had been the subject of discussion during the overnight hours, early in Mary Kaye's labor. Before she got to making those unending terrible noises, when they'd sat quietly in Cooter's kitchen over cups of dishwater-colored coffee, leaving Cletus to tend to the mother-to-be until she was ready to get down to business.

"Cap," Luke had grumbled as their doctor friend had poked around at his shoulder a bit, testing for tenderness or swelling or whatever it was that doctors checked for. "Bought himself a trial in Atlanta." Hard to guess whether that annoyed tone he'd been taking had more to do with Cap Porter getting himself a change of venue, or the way Doc Cooter had been shoving his shirt around to do a visual inspection of the wound. It had only been a few months now that Bo had really known Luke, but already he'd gotten a pretty good idea that the man did not like to be doctored, no matter how badly he hurt.

"Lukas," Cooter had groused, his eyes making clear that he was equally frustrated. "If you don't take this shirt off yourself, I'm going to get the shears and cut it off you."

Well, that might have been interesting to watch. Someone would have ended up with a black eye, and it probably wouldn't have been Luke. But it hadn't turned out that way, just some glowering back and forth, and then the shirt got unbuttoned and rolled off that shoulder.

"He also confessed to a bunch of stuff," Bo had interjected as a distraction. "Cap did. So he ain't going to get off scot-free or nothing."

"Oh yeah?" Cooter had prompted, but he had only been halfway paying attention. Mostly he had been grinning and silently congratulating himself for a genius. Sure, Luke was going to bear an ugly scar for the rest of his life, and on cold, dank days he might be prone to aching. But otherwise, that was one fine bit of doctoring that had healed a gunshot wound so well. "Like what?"

"Like how it was him that bought a lot of the artillery that the Porter gang used to fight, the theft of some of Ol' Nut's livestock, consorting with known criminals," Bo had elaborated. "Some other stuff, too."

Luke's laugh had gotten barked out hard, had been filled with an utter lack of amusement. "What _Babe _there is afraid to tell you," and that hadn't been fair. He wasn't afraid and he wasn't a baby. He was just thoughtful. Kind. Not one to rub salt into already painful wounds. "Is that Cap Porter confessed to the arson of my Pa's farm." Cold look, and there he'd suddenly been, spontaneously appearing in Doc Cooter's kitchen. The notorious Duke, angry and mean and ready to shoot a man dead with the slightest provocation. "And it don't make no sense. All them other things ain't gonna get him no more than a year's time, tops. But he goes confessing to a pair of murders that ain't nobody but me tried to solve in over two years."

"Maybe he's afraid of you," Cooter had suggested. "I reckon I would be if it was me that killed your folks." A nervous little smile had come from the doc. _No offense_, it tried to say. "I'd rather be in jail than waiting for you to hunt me down."

Luke was, he had learned somewhere over the period when the heat of summer had given over to fall rains, the master of making faces. Without bothering to open his mouth, the man could call you stupid or crazy, could express displeasure and impatience. He hadn't ever quite gotten the hang of smiling, though, and someday maybe Bo would teach him that. After Luke got done making all those sour faces that silently accused Doc Cooter as being about as intelligent as a turnip.

"Cap wasn't never scared of me," he'd explained. "Even_ if_ he was the one who had killed my Pa and I knew it and swore revenge on him, he wouldn't have been worried. He just would have sent his boys out to kill me." It had been delivered in such a matter-of-fact tone, almost a verbal shrug even if the notion gave Bo a chill. Luke must've noticed – he hadn't so much as looked in Bo's direction, but his hand had come over anyway to pat him on the shoulder. _Don't worry, it's all theoretical_, the gesture had said. "The way I got it figured, he was already caught with some charges against him. So he confessed to some more to protect someone else. Like Ephraim, Andrew or Tobias." Or maybe all three at once. Porter's sons, who were gone now. Rumored to be in the Carolinas, if not Virginia. Some folks even had them running west to the Indian Territory, where no marshal had the jurisdiction to follow them. "Jud must've tangled with one of them, or seen them doing something illegal. They probably chased him down but they didn't never get him with a good enough shot to kill him, so they had to come back and finish the job."

"Luke," Bo had mumbled. Wanted to say more, to do something to take away the hollowed-out tone of the words, the emptiness in those eyes that were staring out at nothing at all.

Then it had been gone; Luke had just looked at him. "I ain't going out in search of them, Bo." So Luke wasn't planning on chasing them over state lines to get his revenge, and that was progress over what he'd been doing for two years in the feud. Bo wasn't sure that his cousin's restraint would hold firm were any of the Porter boys to show their faces back here in Dade. Then again, Luke might just have to fight Bo for the privilege of getting revenge them if they did show up again. Because now that Bo had a family, he reckoned it was his job to protect them. To keep them from ever sounding the way Luke did when he talked about losing his pa and brother.

Somewhere in there, Mary Kaye had come out with the sort of holler that had made Bo want to ask Luke if he really was dead set on sitting here listening to the woman give birth, and Cooter had excused himself to see to her.

And now, if it was possible (and three hours ago Bo would have sworn it wasn't), the noises coming from that room were even worse. Bo flinched at every scream; Luke just sat there tearing more sheets than it would take to wrap everyone in Doc Cooter's house in them from head to toe and back again. Strong hands, muscles in his arms flexing and Luke wasn't enjoying the waiting or the sounds any more than Bo was.

There were nicer things he could have done, gentler ways he could have figured out what he wanted to know. Then again, such approaches relied on straightforwardness, and this was, when all was said and done, the notorious Duke sitting across from him. The sort of man who had a reputation for ruthlessness and immortality both.

Which left him with only one choice, really. "Catch," he said, tossing the glass mug that he'd just drained of its nearly undrinkable contents. Mostly in Luke's direction, but then again, just slightly right of comfortable catching distance.

Which had no bearing on the fact that it was safely caught before it could shatter onto the gritty floorboards. Enveloped in Luke's meaty hand, but Bo wasn't terribly worried about that part. Not the catching itself; Cooter wouldn't have minded or even noticed if one of his cups had gone missing, or even if there were tiny shards of glass that got left behind by such a foolish act. It was Luke's face that he watched instead, looking for a wince of pain or a bitten lip at the sudden movement of his right arm, but all he got was a mean glare that asked him exactly what he thought he was doing.

"Bo," chastised him, but he just shrugged and grinned.

"Looks like you're ready." Ready to smack him, maybe. All friendly-like, just a swat on the back of his head and it wouldn't be Luke's fault if it hurt him. But the smack never came, just a headshake and lips pressing against each other so hard that they were flat and almost white. "I reckon," and some more of Mary Kaye's moaning interrupted the thought. They both sat there in silence listening for more or for worse, maybe full-out screams, but they didn't come and the girl quieted back into herself. "It's time we moved out of the church," Bo finished. "Now that you ain't favoring that arm anymore."

And it was, it was past time for that. Living en masse had started out very peaceful and pleasant. A sense of family where there'd hardly been one before. Luke and Daisy had been something to one another all along; playmates as kids, estranged for a few years, and then an arrangement that resembled being business partners. Jesse had known most of the Duke kids all along, but Bo – Bo had been nothing more than a boy with a made-up last name and no one to claim him as blood relative for his whole life. Those first days of being surrounded by kin, night and day, had been like heaven to him.

But as Luke's pain had diminished and his mobility improved, he became notably restless. Impatient and frustrated, easily angered. Not to the point of violence, but he'd definitely been bucking against Pastor Jesse. Sassing or downright discourteous half the time, and Bo hated it. Jesse tolerated some of it. More than Bo would have figured he ought to, but then there'd been that late night conversation out on the church steps while Luke slept fitfully inside under Enos' watch and Daisy was cloistered in the rectory.

_That boy's head has always been hard as a rock,_ Jesse had explained. _He ain't never listened to no one but his pa, and that was only because they was two feathers of the same color. They pretty much shared one opinion, most days._

_But that don't mean you got to take his lip_, Bo had answered back. _If I'd talked that way to Miss Lavinia—_

_She would have paddled your behind?_ Jesse had laughed out. _She wouldn't never hurt you for nothing. Besides,_ the old man had added, his finger ticking in the air like it was waving away the days and years gone by. _You ain't one to tolerate scolding. You don't like it when someone's unhappy with you, but Luke, he don't mind that kind of thing. The harder you try to tell him something, the more he's going to fight back against it. Sometimes it's best just to hold your tongue and let him do all that fighting against himself. He gets tired, eventually._

_But he ain't got no right to talk to you like that_, Bo had insisted. Still, Jesse had tutted that away.

_He's got a right to be angry at me_, the pastor corrected. _I let him down more ways than you can guess. I figure I owe him a little patience and a lot of love, and in time he'll come around._ The old man's eyes, what of them Bo could see in the gaslight over the courthouse door at the end of the street, had gotten distant then. A little clouded over, like a fog-choked morning in the valley. _Back when he was little, he used to call me Unca' Jesse_, came out sounding just as misty as those eyes. _But I wasn't much of an Uncle to him for a lot of years. Just a crazy old—_

_Moonshiner_, Bo had finished for him. _Lavinia used to call you a moonshining fool._

Jesse nodded a bit about that. _She was right_, he'd admitted. _And she had high hopes for me to be something better. I disappointed her, but I don't figure I hurt her none. I wasn't always what she wanted me to be, but I didn't abandon her. Not like I did with Luke._

_You didn't abandon him_, Bo had protested. _You was always nearby._

_Nearby and so tangled up in my own miseries that I didn't never offer to help him handle his_, Jesse explained_. He was just a boy, and he didn't know no better. I was a full-grown man._ A snort of a laugh. _He's still just a boy, but he's a good boy. Under all that sass and those mean looks, he's just a fool trying to figure out how to love without getting hurt. But you and me, we're smarter than that_, the pastor had counseled. _We know there ain't no way to protect against the pain that sometimes comes with loving. We just figure all the good parts are worth whatever hurt might come along with them. Luke, he'll figure that out eventually. With patience_, and there went that finger, ticking through the air again, _and time. He's got the best teacher in the world right there by his side_, and Jesse's finger had come to a halt from its motion, pointing right at Bo. _You know how to love with your whole heart._

Bo took to calling the pastor _Uncle Jesse_ after that, and Luke had glowered over it, though he never said anything. Daisy picked it up and started saying it too. But Luke, he was stubborn. And insistent in his coldness to the old man, enough so that Bo figured separating them for a bit might be smart. Keeping them apart so Jesse would stop trying so hard and Luke would stop resisting with everything in him. To give the relationship the space it needed to heal itself.

"I want to go rebuild the farm," Bo announced, here, now in Cooter's kitchen while he tried to ignore all the sounds that came from a baby trying to make its way out of the swollen belly of an otherwise willowy woman. "Your farm." _Our farm_, but it wasn't that, yet. Wouldn't be until he put in his portion of the labor, not until Luke invited him to share it.

But the objections had to be waded through first. Because Bo had first lobbed the idea of returning to the land out on what had once been called Gray Voice Lane in this very same building, in those days when Luke was still flat on his back and barely able to wiggle a few fingers. And he'd been told, in no uncertain terms, that the notion was foolish. Luke had every intention of dying and Bo knew nothing about farming and a hundred other reasons.

"We ain't got no money for no rebuilding." That one was easy in comparison. "There ain't no house, and it's going to be winter." As if they hadn't both done plenty of sleeping in strange places on cold nights, like they couldn't piece together some sort of a shelter or work to earn enough money to buy the boards. "And you still don't know nothing about farming."

He could argue, he could explain how Luke's objections were ridiculous really, he could make a very solid case for his own point of view. But he didn't, he just smiled. Beamed for all he was worth, and watched Luke's eyes roll in answer. Kept right on with the grinning through the shaking head and the echo of a smirk across Luke's face.

"Just don't say I didn't warn you," his cousin acquiesced, and that just went to prove that of all the weapons Bo had ever mastered in his life, the smile was his best.

A cry, sharp and high. Sounded furious and agitated and the voice making it couldn't have been more than a minute old. Obviously the newborn had inherited the Porter temper.

Luke stopped tearing at the sheets, quit glaring at Bo's victory over the farm on Gray Voice Lane and his eyes took on a soft cast. Distant but tender, that was the look on his face when Cletus opened the door between the two of them and the new mother, gentle was the way his hands curled around the baby when he was offered the opportunity to hold it. Bo kept his distance, lingering in the doorway because he didn't need to get any closer to all that blood and sweat, even if both baby and mother both appeared to have survived the struggle. But he watched and he figured that Luke ought to have babies of his own some day. If he could ever manage to calm all the way down, if he could find himself the right girl. Which wasn't going to be Mary Kaye; he loved her sure, but the way he patted her shoulder when he took his leave made clear that he understood he'd never have her. Not like he wanted, not in a way that he could really trust, so he let her go.

"I hope he grows up like you, Luke," the girl said to him about her baby, and it didn't help. But it didn't hurt, either, Luke seemed content to be admired anyway.

And satisfied, now that he'd seen Mary Kaye through her ordeal, so Bo slung an arm across his shoulders. Tolerated the way those bright eyes rolled and his lips curled into a smirk, and guided Luke to the front door. Out onto the porch where he unhitched Traveler, waited until Luke mounted before climbing up himself, then nudged the horse in a slow amble toward the church, where they could get a few hours of sleep before heading off to begin their lives on Gray Voice Lane.


	46. I Wish You Peace

_**Author's note**: Sorry about the gap between the last installment and this one. I have been running around like the fabled chicken without a head. But I seem to have recovered my wits, so here's another chapter._**  
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_And, as another story winds down, I want to thank y'all for joining me on this ride. (Even if it was on horseback and not in a car...)  
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><p><strong>46. I Wish You Peace<strong>

There was mud everywhere, in varying shades of brown and gray, clumped all the way from the vestibule to the pulpit. Hanging off the men's boots and caught on the hems of the ladies' dresses, stains of it one more than one pair of knees. Emma Tisdale had somehow managed to get a smudge of it on her chin just under her lower lip and Lulu Coltrane had some on the knuckles of her left hand. Enos, somewhere, was bound to be covered in it, but Jesse couldn't see his sexton right now for the crowd that filled his pews.

It was the first Sunday of a new year; it ought to have been fresh and clean. White with snow, maybe, but it hadn't worked out that way. Rainy day following after rainy day, the sort of cold misery dripping down from the sky that made a man want to stay in bed and if he couldn't do that, to wrap up in a blanket and drink hot coffee all day.

Jesse didn't have that luxury. He had duties and responsibilities, though they came with benefits. Like standing up here in the pulpit and seeing the faces. The mud, too, but if he let his eyes go slightly blurry, that disappeared and all that was left was the people.

More than usual, but it was a new year and a miserable day. Some might have been here for the dry place to sit and others might been chased in by the ghosts of resolutions they'd made. Didn't matter what brought them to the church; Jesse was glad to see them. Children and elders, and then there were the young adults. It gave a man hope.

Oh, sure, there were some young men out in the chilly rain, still entrenched in their feuding and fighting ways. Disorganized now and without the backing of wealthy men. Cap Porter was in an Atlanta jail these days and rumor had it that he was living as well there as he ever had in his airy house on the outskirts of Trenton. Jesse didn't know whether the tales were true or tall, and he didn't care, either. Isaiah Hickory hadn't lasted through the month of October before his heart gave out. Some folks said it was fear that he'd be the next one called to justice, but then again, some figured that his heart was simply broken by the loss of his long-time adversary. He might have hated Cap Porter, but he had loved that hate, had tended and nursed it with all due care until it grew to be big and strong. Without that hate, it seemed that Ol' Nut didn't have much of anything to live for. And Jefferson Hogg, who had aided and abetted the feuding families in his own way, seemed to be a permanent guest in the Dade jailhouse. Somehow or other his trial date kept getting set back and eventually he'd probably get turned loose based on the time he'd already served. Which meant that for now there wasn't anyone to support those boys out there. They just didn't know how to come in from the cold because they weren't ready to give up their grudges. Not yet.

Jesse could be thankful for those who had, or were in the varying stages of giving them up, anyway. Half-feral, hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked, but they were here. And he didn't have to worry too hard about whether they'd be missing church next week because they'd gone and gotten themselves buried in the miserable, muddy ground. Oh, sure, some would miss church anyway, the frenetic energy of a new year would pass and they'd rediscover Saturday night carousing, but they wouldn't be gone forever. Only until Easter and then Christmas after that. Another year and they'd be sitting in front of him looking just as gloriously filthy, haggard, overworked, underfed and alive as they were right now.

"My children," he began, then shook his head. Nervous, so many people listening to him, and he hadn't meant to call them all his children. The widow Baxley, who had been old for as long as Jesse could remember, might object to being called a child. (If she could hear him, but no matter how close she sat or how loudly he spoke, she probably wasn't getting but one word out of every three anyway.) "I am so glad to see you all."

Jesse hadn't ever been an eloquent man. He'd been one of the lucky boys who had learned his letters and been taught how to sound them into words. He'd read his fair share and knew his Bible inside and out, but he wasn't now, nor would he ever be, half the speaker that the Reverend Webster had once been.

Yet he was honest, and so the words that came from him were heartfelt. His children sat out there in the pews in front of him, and he was happy to see them.

To see Daisy, graciously sitting in the second row, leaving the front for those with a greater need. Like Dobro Doolin, who was hobbling around on a cane these days. Temporarily, or at least that was what folks were saying. Along with mentioning how the bullet that had passed through his foot had been—somehow or other, and no one knew the exact particulars—been discharged from his own gun. He didn't walk well, had come in from the side entrance where the ground was flat, and Daisy had surreptitiously made room for him by slipping back one pew.

Outwardly an angel, that one. With her dress such a faded shade of gray that it almost looked silver in the angular winter light and her hair, not yet long enough to be pulled back into an intricate bun, in curls around her fresh-scrubbed face. Looking every bit like a fine lady, and who would ever guess that those hands held primly in her lap had once been molded around the grip of a gun? Or that her finger, now weighted down by the dull silver ring that was all her new husband could afford to give her, had once been covered in gun powder?

Enos himself had spent the better part of the morning wearing his shy smile and taking orders from his wife while she tended to a turkey roasting in the fireplace at the rectory. Although the couple had moved off the church property and into a small room at Emma Tisdale's after their well-attended wedding under the russet November leaves of the oak trees in the churchyard, officiated by Jesse and legally sworn to by Rosco, Daisy had offered to feed the congregation after today's service. So Enos had been pressed into service as her assistant, helping her cook, setting up the tables in the basement, counting out plates and forks. Marching back and forth from church to rectory, fetching and carrying and—he was nowhere to be found, now. Probably hiding back in the vestibule, listening from where he couldn't be seen, covered in mud as he most likely was.

Three rows back and over on the far left there was another of his children. The one he'd figured had the least likely chance of being here, but there he was. Presentable, if not entirely refined; quiet, if not completely tamed. Serious, still smoldering from old wounds, but the intense blue of those eyes met Jesse's and held there. Not offering him forgiveness or trust, but there was open need in that look anyway. In the way Luke had come to him a few weeks back.

_Bo wants to learn the trade_, he'd said, not bothering to elaborate because they were Dukes. There was only one trade. _I ain't no one to teach him; I hardly learned it proper myself. I just did my best to keep it going when my pa was—_

The words had stumbled there, tripped and fallen flat on their faces, and the boy had looked away. Toward the door, like he was considering running back out into the darkness and pretending he'd never come here, never sought help for a minute in his life.

_A mess_, Jesse had finished for him. _Your pa was sick with misery_, came out all in a rush, quick, before the boy could storm out on him, _without your ma. It was hard on him, losing her._

_It was hard on all of us_, Luke had replied, voice steely, cold, no forgiveness in it anywhere. _Except you. She wasn't your wife or your ma, you didn't have no reason to be 'sick' about it. But you didn't do nothing other than sell what I brewed up._ Angry, and it made Jesse question himself, his own wisdom and why he thought he could counsel anyone when he'd been so confused about Luke for so long. _You didn't never try to fix nothing. You didn't try to stop my pa or help him or talk—_

_To you about it_, Jesse had finished for him, though he knew that wasn't where the sentence was going. _I didn't help you_.

_I didn't need your dang help_, Luke had insisted, arms going across his chest to prove exactly how little he needed anything at all. Just look at how good he was at protecting his heart. _My pa did._

_Your pa was—he didn't want my help no more than you did. Not,_ Jesse hastened to add, hands up to surrender any pride he might ever have had about that part of his life, _that I tried real hard. But he didn't want it. You—_

_Didn't need it_, Luke had snarled at him. _I wasn't the one that was wasting my life on drink_.

_No_, Jesse had admitted. _Not that. Not drink, but anger. You been so angry you ain't been able to think straight for nearly five years._

_Two years_, Luke had answered evenly. _I spent just over two years looking for the men that killed my pa. Was you so busy drinking 'shine that you can't count back that far? _Accusing, hateful, full of rage and begging for a whipping, but that wouldn't have done either of them any good.

_And for more than two years before that, too_, Jesse had insisted. _You ain't been yourself since you lost your ma. You're just a ball of rage, boy, and you want to direct it all at me. I can't say as I blame you for being mad at me, because I done made mistakes. But until you admit that you're just as furious at your pa for leaving you, _twice, really. First through drink and second through death. _And figure out how you're going to deal with it, you ain't never going to feel no better._

The look in Luke's eyes then had been pure murder. Like he wanted to take those words and cram them back down Jesse's throat until he choked on them. But he hadn't. He turned on his heel and stalked right back out of the church, closing the door behind him just as gently as a summer's breeze.

Jesse had found him hours later, sitting on the front stoop, elbows on his knees, head down and fingers tangled in his own hair. He'd spent some part of the evening in the saloon; his breath told that tale. But he wasn't that same resistant drunk that he'd always been when Jesse'd seen him in that state before. He was quiet, his usual rigid posture gone in a nearly boneless slump, and when Jesse had put an arm around him, he hadn't fought it. He'd sat that way for longer than Jesse had ever seen him be still before, and then he'd gotten to his feet to take his leave. _Bo will be worried_, he'd said, and then he was gone.

But he'd come back, asking for Jesse's help again. _I ain't no good at moonshining_, he'd said. _You got to teach Bo_.

_I gave up moonshining_, _boy,_ he'd explained. _It wasn't good for me. It wasn't good for my family_, he'd added when Luke's eyes had started to squint with distaste. _My moonshining wasn't good for you. I wasn't there when you needed me to be, boy._

Babe Sheridan. Sitting at Luke's shoulder, right up against that place where the older boy had been injured, almost protectively. More than two years on the street after leaving the orphanage, and he'd tried with everything in him to convince the whole county that he was a man. Deep voice, mustache, skulking around the brothel and the saloon. Announcing it loudly and with as much authority as he could muster – I'm a man now – and about the best response he could have hoped for was a pat on the head and a patronizing, _of course you are dear. Now why don't you come in out of the cold and I'll make you some nice warm broth?_

He looked the same as he ever had, those dark blue eyes fringed by white-blonde hair, perfect teeth shown in his easily-granted smile. But underneath the surface that still made every woman over the age of thirty want to adopt and care for him, the boy had managed, finally, to become a man. He'd taken the name Duke and he wore it with fierce pride. More than that, he'd found family (or declared himself a part of family, because there was no way to ever know for sure whether he was Isaac's or Albert's or anyone's at all) and then he'd grabbed on with both arms and refused to let go. He'd fought creation itself (and Luke Duke, who was a formidable opponent, as half the county could attest) to keep them together, safe and alive. Of the children that Jesse considered his own, he was most proud of Bo.

The boy had tamed Luke. Not completely, the older Duke still had fangs that could get bared when he felt threatened, but well enough. He'd been the youngster that Luke needed to look after, to keep safe from harm. He'd become the little brother that Luke had lost, but he was more than that. Because Jud was to be protected, yes. But he'd been tolerated, endured. Loved because he was kin, but half the time Luke would as soon throw up his hands as put up with the trouble that managing Jud caused. The way Luke felt about Bo, the way he looked after him, was apparent in every softened line of his face, every quiet moment that he permitted. Despite himself, Luke loved Bo for no other reason than that he was Bo.

And Bo was much more of a peer than Jud had ever been. He'd done more than his share of building the lean-to that the boys now occupied on the old Duke farmstead. Luke's arm wasn't to be trusted yet and though both boys knew it, they didn't say anything about it. Not to each other. Luke handed off nails and advice freely, and Bo took them both with equal ease as he banged together board after board until they had enough of a shelter to keep them warm and safe. The foundation of a house had also been started, but it wouldn't be finished until spring at the earliest, so the boys slept in the flimsy space that Bo had built, the door nothing more than a blanket that Daisy had strung up in the opening at the front. It couldn't be comfortable, and Luke's shoulder still set to aching on cold nights. But they were making progress.

Toward what Luke figured was Bo's dream, and what Bo knew was Luke's, and now there was really only one thing that Jesse could do for them. And that was to convince Luke that he was made for better things than he thought he was. Not just a fighter and strategist, but a farmer. Maybe even a moonshiner, if that was what he really wanted to be. That Luke had within him the knowledge and skills and strength to show Bo how to be a Duke boy. And that Bo had the heart to learn even those things that Luke didn't know how to teach.

They'd figure it out, they would. And Jesse would keep them close and guide them, even if he couldn't ever go back to living on the edge of the wilderness himself. They would be fine.

Which left Jesse with one last bridge to mend, one last road to walk. Jedediah would want him to do it, to go on up that hill and fetch the last of his boys down. Not to stay, John didn't have to move here. But he needed to come see his daughter, to look at how she'd blossomed down here in the valley below. How Daisy was lithe and strong and capable, how she'd found love and how her smile could light up an entire town. Someday, he promised, he'd get the girl's folks to embrace her again.

But first he had to get through this sermon, then have a fine meal before cleaning up the mud that covered the place from one end to the other. So he set to telling parables of sheep that were lost, and the shepherds that were the only ones who could guide them home.


	47. Seven Bridges Road

_**Author's Note: **Another one comes to a close (with - fair warning here - a particularly long chapter). Always sad to let a story go, but eventually they all have to come to an end. Thanks again to Mirthless Laughter who responded favorably to and encouraged the story when it was nothing more than the tiny germ of an idea._

_Looks like I may be taking a bit of a break since I'm not working on anything to post for Dukes. But, you know, the series was about fun and community and I've found both here in this fandom. So thank you all for your kindness and friendliness over the years. (This is not, despite any appearances to the contrary, a farewell speech. Because those never seem to stick.)_

_Just a reminder, this story was original developed thanks in great part to the Eagles' song, Doolin-Dalton. Each of the sections is named for a song, and in the original version of the story, there are lyric epigraphs at the top of each section. Those epigraphs highlight the part of the song that helped me develop that part of the story, and are sometimes pretty important to understanding why the story went as it did. This story is posted in its entirety, including those epigraphs, on AO3. There is a link at the bottom of my profile page to get you there._

_One last time to say that I don't own Dukes or earn any money for what I write about them, and then I leave you to the tale._

* * *

><p><strong>47. Seven Bridges Road<strong>

Bo was, quite simply, looking to get hit. A year ago he could have put it down to the yellow-haired fool not knowing any better (just over a year ago he had been laughing at Babe Sheridan's brazenness in riding down Monroe Street without a hat, and then found himself running for his life from a fire bomb) and six months ago he might have dismissed it as a slow learning process, but by now there was no other excuse to give it. The boy must like having hand-shaped red splotches on his face. Made by skinny fingers.

Enos knew it, too. Just look at how he recoiled even as Bo smiled over his little bit of cleverness. Smart man. Daisy was dangerous enough on an average day. Today, well—

"Bo," Luke announced, a little too loudly and letting his hand smack heavily onto the fool's shoulder. "Maybe you ought to go out and chop some wood."

"And maybe he'd better just stay right here," Daisy interjected, eyes squinted down and one hand firmly on her hip while the other came to a point leveled at Bo's chest. Every bit Yellow-eye except for the fact that she had skirts down to her shins. Well, that and a notably protruding belly, and she hadn't been halfway sane since it first started rounding out back in the spring. Bo hadn't managed to get himself killed in the feud, but he was definitely trying to make up for that with all due speed. "And tell me exactly what he's trying to say."

"Now, Daisy," and wasn't it cute how Enos was trying to throw himself into the line of fire. A good man, fair and brave and to be honest, the Dukes couldn't afford to lose him. "I'm sure he wasn't saying nothing at all."

Well. No one could argue with that. Bo talked – oh, he could talk all day and into the night. Luke knew that because although they had finished out the walls and roof of this place enough that it could be called a cabin, it was still tiny. A common room where they cooked, ate and did just about everything else, and then a small loft above where they both slept. As much as anyone could sleep when one of them talked all the time.

So yeah, Bo's lips formed word after word. But rarely was he actually saying anything that needed to be listened to.

"Now wait just a minute," but the boy had everyone's rapt attention now. Lighting could strike the farmyard just outside where they were all standing around in a lopsided circle, and it wouldn't make a one of them turn away from the spectacle that was right here in front of them. "I was too saying something; I was asking Enos exactly when he got so good at cooking." Which could have been a perfectly normal question, harmless and even reasonably interesting to get the answer to. If only that last word wasn't said with such vehemence and distaste, complete with the implied _why are you doing women's work_ in the tone. "And fetching." Or if it hadn't been followed by that.

Or if Daisy hadn't been great with child and just looking to take offense with only the tiniest of provocations.

"Bo Duke, you just come over here," she commanded.

Enos, who had been lugging in a large pot of – something, Luke had no idea what was inside it, only that it was clearly heavy and round and it was going to take up the entire width of the fireplace that he and Bo had built into their little cabin – put down his burden and wiped an arm across his forehead. All for the best, now he had both hands free in case this thing got ugly.

Bo's face was red. It hadn't been only seconds ago, but there it was. Embarrassment wrapped up in defiance and he turned to Luke. Who just shrugged back at him. He'd tried to save his young cousin from what was coming next. Sure, chopping wood left him with a sore back and calloused hands, but that was better than what Daisy was about to do to him.

"Go over there," Luke offered by way of advice. "Maybe she'll let you live."

Which wasn't wise at all; those fiery eyes got turned on him, next. "You want to join him?" Daisy asked, like she was his pa, threatening a whipping. Luke had taken plenty of licks for things Jud had started. He'd take twice as many and then some for Bo, too. He'd take another bullet if he had to, in order to save the boy who had rescued him out of those very fields out there, who had dragged him out of the feud and given him a reason to bother living. He would let himself get beaten or killed – if, and this was an important if – it would do any good. Which in this case it wouldn't; it would only get them both sentenced to whatever punishment Daisy had in mind.

"No ma'am," he answered, all innocence. Bo doled out a hateful glower for abandoning him during his time of need. Luke raised an eyebrow back, and gestured with nothing more than a look for Bo to take the three steps to go stand in front of their temperamental cousin. Added a little shrug of encouragement – _what's the worst that could happen?_ silently contained in the gesture. She didn't, after all, carry guns on a daily basis anymore.

Blond head dropped with the realization that he was on his own and Bo stepped forward to take his punishment. Which consisted of an apron getting pulled off Daisy's rounded belly and tied onto Bo's flat one.

"It's about time one of you got good at cooking anyway," the girl said, slapping a ladle into Bo's hand, and gesturing for Enos to get the pot situated over the hot coals in the fireplace. "You boys are too skinny and there ain't no excuse for it."

"Luke," Bo tried, wagging the ladle in the air in an oversized gesture of misery at this turn of events, plea in his voice to be released from this terrible fate.

"I reckon she's right, Bo," he answered back. "You ain't been doing too good a job of feeding me." And, of course, no one would expect Luke to be the one having to do the cooking and feeding. Though it had been a solid year since he took a bullet to his shoulder, the older Duke boy was still recuperating. At least that was what his kin kept saying. He wasn't supposed to work into the evening or do too much heavy lifting, and he certainly wasn't supposed to tax himself. Which made it only logical that if he had to limit his activity, he couldn't go using his right arm to stir whatever was brewing over there.

There was some fussing and fighting over the need to wear the apron, but Daisy settled that one by reminding him that stains on his clothing would only mean that she'd have to teach him how to properly do the washing next. He sighed and gave in, letting her tell him when to stir and how much of which tin of powder to add until Mary Kaye Porter showed up with her toddling Paul in tow, and took over the food-tending duties. In return, she asked that he and Bo take her little boy, now nine months old and just active enough to get into absolutely every sort of trouble he could find, outside to wear him out. In his haste to take advantage of this reprieve, Bo almost made it out the door with the apron still wrapped around him. Luke was fully willing to let it happen, but Mary Kaye caught the blonde by the elbow just in time. Untied and took it for herself then wished them luck with her baby that was identically blue-eyed to his mama, but might otherwise have been Luke's for his dark hair and mischievous smile.

"Bo," Enos scolded as he followed the two Duke boys out. "You shouldn't ought to rile Daisy like that."

"Enos," the boy complained.

"Now Bo, I know you didn't mean nothing by it," Enos went on with a wave of his hand. Silly smile that indicated that marriage hadn't changed everything; he was still a man, and if all things were equal, he'd be on Bo's side of this thing. But all things were not equal. "But she's with child now and she ain't entirely," _sane_. Nowhere near sane, neither half of the married couple were sane, not if they thought having a baby was a good idea. Here they were not two minutes away from Mary Kaye having turned Paul's well-being over to Luke, and the babe was already pulling himself up by the porch railing that they'd only erected last week, and giving serious consideration to toppling down the steps head first. Luke caught the boy with one arm around the ribcage and carried him down into the hardpan dirt in front of the house. "Herself right now. You got to be careful."

And then there was that other thing that none of them were talking about, though it had wedged itself under the skin of each and every one of them. Like a splinter that you couldn't pull out, but you couldn't ignore it either, no matter how hard you tried – Daisy's parents were making their careful way down the winding trail from Lookout Ridge right at this moment. Due to arrive for the afternoon meal at Bo and Luke's cabin, and it would be a first for all of them. The first time Bo and Enos met John and Elizabeth at all, the first time Luke saw them since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and the first time Daisy was seeing them since she'd gone off and gotten hitched up to a boy that they didn't choose for her. And then there was that dust trail out on the lane, the clip-clop of hooves and the gentle word of a man convincing his team to pull the wagon slowly around the turn that would bring him up to the house. Jesse, and it would be the first time he'd seen these particular kinfolk since Daisy was no bigger than Paul.

Who was sitting in the farmyard dirt and trying to stuff something in his mouth. Might have been a worm or a flower stem. Luke couldn't tell, all he knew for sure was the Bo was over there not three steps away from the toddler and he did nothing about it other than to point. Any boy that had grown up in an orphanage full of babies ought to be better at handling little ones. But Bo didn't have the first clue and he wasn't afraid to admit it. Luke went to retrieve Paul a second time and got slobbered on for his efforts. "A-la-la-la-la," Paul explained.

But it all worked out just fine and Daisy would have agreed about that. Because Jesse coaxed the pair of horses – one of them Traveler, lent to him by Luke for the day and the other Miz Tisdale's Horace, borrowed for the price of a kiss on her cheek – to a halt in front of the cabin, then enlisted Bo's help to lift something out of the wagon. Another round pot, clearly full of something heavy and Bo was already licking his lips at the prospect.

"Ain't gonna be no room for that in the fireplace," Luke warned. "Daisy's in there cooking something—"

"Rabbit stew," Bo supplied, because he'd gotten up close and personal with her concoction already.

"—And she ain't about to make room for you in there." Not without a fight and that kind of thing could get ugly. Daisy had herself a temper, but Jesse wasn't exactly known for keeping his calm, either.

"Sorry I'm late," Jesse said, but it wouldn't have mattered. Even if he'd gotten here first, Daisy would still have chased him out of the cabin by now. "That danged Dobro Doolin showed up just as I was getting ready to come out here. Said he needed to set his wedding date back by a month." Yeah, the fool had been doing that like clockwork. He'd gone and proposed to the girl who'd been known to all of them as Lily from the brothel (but turned out to be a Tillingham once she put on decent clothes and teased her hair up into a bun – Maybelle, her name was) and set a date to be wed. Then set that date back, and then back again until it would be surprising if what was supposed to be a March wedding happened before September. "Wouldn't go away until he saw me scratch the old date out of the ledger book and write in a new one. But it don't make no never mind. Since when do Dukes need a fireplace to do our cooking? Boy," he commanded at Bo, because Luke's hands were still full of a wriggling baby, "fetch me some firewood."

It was the kind of thing that could have taken all day if the blonde was left to do it alone, so Luke handed Paul over to Enos with the admonishment that he should not, under any circumstances, let the baby get the better of him. Then he joined his cousin in bringing the oldster some tinder and kindling, then splitting a couple of logs to burn when the fire got big enough. By the time he finished that, Jesse had his pot settled over a small flame and was humming as he stirred its contents.

Bo never was one for patience or manners, so he stuck his pinky right down into Jesse's pot. Got swatted for his efforts, but brought his coated finger right up to his mouth for a taste anyway. A little pout and, "It ain't rattlesnake chili," he complained.

"I never said it was," the old man informed him with a wink. "Now you just take this," and for the second time in the same morning, Bo got handed a ladle, "and give it a stir every couple of minutes." Funny how Bo didn't sass him like he had Daisy. Maybe he'd learned something, or maybe stirring a pot over an open fire in the great outdoors didn't constitute cooking in that blonde brain of his. "Well, hello there, little feller," Jesse said, and then he took Paul from the arms of a decidedly nervous-looking Enos.

Luke patted the sexton's back. "Just a couple more months before you get to do that for real," he said, and his tone was just about anything but sympathetic. "Don't worry," he added when that shiny pink face, slick with nervous sweat, turned toward him. "She ain't never gonna let you hold him anyways." No doubt that Daisy would protect her baby with twice the ferocity that she had always protected Luke. And that was a downright terrifying prospect. "Unless he needs a diaper change. Then he'll be all yours." Which, oddly, didn't make Enos stop looking flushed and downright sickly with nerves.

"Don't you listen to him, boy," Jesse said and plopped himself down on a log that was too wide to bother splitting. "That one there," wide finger of the hand that wasn't full of squirming baby pointing in Luke's general direction, "don't know the first thing about settling down and raising babies. Why, if I was to wait for him to give me grandchildren," which was a technical impossibility, what with Jesse being his great-uncle and all. Hard for childless man to wind up with grandbabies. "I'd be bent over a cane and sightless by the time he got around to it."

"Luke's got a lady friend," Bo tattled from his post over the pot. "What is this Uncle Jesse?" he all but whined, because not knowing which food was being prepared was much more important than spouting Luke's secrets to the public. Or to their family, which was even worse.

"Does he, now?" the old man asked, taking his eyes off the babbling baby on his broad knee to wink. At Luke, at Bo, at Enos or maybe at the sky above. It was an important thing to wink about, the notion that Luke could find a woman that would put up with him. "Anyone I know?"

Luke shrugged, would have been perfectly content to leave it at that. _I don't know whether you know her, and I got nothing else to say on the matter._ But, of course, Bo was having way too much fun watching him squirm to let such things lie.

"That red-headed spit-fire that's living down at Miz Tisdale's. She reckons she's the next Annie Oakley."

"No she don't," Luke cut in. Because if his private life was going to be talked about at this here gathering, there needed to be at least a few facts dispersed with all the tall tales. "She—"

Got interrupted right there by yet another dusty wagon pulling into the yard.

"Howdy, Marshal," Jesse greeted. "Come right on down here and join us. The ladyfolk got the house claimed as their own."

"Just a minute there, Jesse," Rosco called back. "Got me some cargo to unload. You reckon one of you boys could help me?"

Luke was perfectly willing to step right away from this conversation to be of assistance to Rosco, but the good-hearted Enos beat him to it. Luke followed around the back of the wagon anyway and dang it all if they weren't unloading a Hogg. Not the edible kind either. The one-time pillar of the community had his hands chained in front of him and, "I couldn't leave the prisoner," Rosco explained.

Which wasn't strictly true; the marshal had left more threatening prisoners alone in his jail for longer periods than an afternoon. But by now it was pretty much known that Rosco had refused to surrender Hogg to the Morganville jail to which Judge Petticord had remanded him. Seemed to keep the marshal happy to have himself a pet. Soon enough he'd have to let Hogg go, though. It was only an eighteen month sentence, at the end of which the former justice and current jailbird had sworn that he'd run for governor. After all, he'd declared, it was in the blood. Just look at Big Jim Hogg, the current governor of Texas. Who was not, as far anyone could tell, related to Jefferson Hogg at all. But the man never had been particularly concerned with honesty, and it would be foolish to assume that nearly a year spent in the Dade jailhouse would change that in any way.

"Well," Jesse said. "I reckon it's a good thing I made an extra big pot." Because Hogg, already plenty heavy, had put on quite a bit of weight in the pokey. He blamed it on Rosco's refusal to let him smoke his pipe, but Bo had confided that he figured it was thanks to Lulu Coltrane's hearty cooking. Everyone knew that Rosco's sister was sweet on the prisoner.

"Rosco," the man in question scolded, as though he was the one in charge of the situation. "Next time you take me somewhere, you got to provide me with a cushion." And just maybe he was the boss of this little twosome. The marshal's face was serious, his head tipped in concentration. Just waiting to be told what he'd done wrong now. "You can't go causing grave injury to a prisoner by making him ride in a hard wagon on a bumpy road."

"Oo-oo," Rosco answered back as he let his brain catch up with the words. "I reckon your fat little body is cushion enough." A silly little giggle, and he took one of Hogg's elbows to guide him to the log Jesse was sitting on. Got a doleful look out of brown eyes about how logs were just as hard as wagon beds, but in the end Jesse shifted to make room and the prisoner sat.

"Well," he groused. "I reckon the food better be good."

Jesse's eyes rolled before he caught himself. He was the respected pastor of the church, after all, supposed to be kind and patient, even if the man next to him had not exactly been invited to this little gathering of family and friends and ought to consider himself lucky for getting to eat anything at all. "Best you ever had," was a promise from one old man to another. Both rather big in the belly and they knew good food when they tasted it. "And you'll be saying grace before you get any, too." Dubious look on Hogg's face about that one. "Don't worry, it'll be tasty enough to take away that bitterness in your throat from the pride you'll be swallowing."

"What is it?" the former justice demanded, as if a prisoner had a right to be picky about his food. About all that the law obligated for his meals was bread and water.

"Luke can tell you." Which was an interesting assertion for the oldster to make, considering Luke hadn't been anywhere near the preparation process. "Go taste it, boy."

And that got him a dirty look from Bo, who had gotten smacked for sampling the brew before it was ready. But the blonde's efforts at presenting a mean visage always came out looking cute anyway, so Luke didn't worry about it a whole lot. He just walked right up to the pot, took the ladle from Bo and dipped himself out a small amount. Didn't even have to put it to his lips to know, but he did it anyway. Closed his eyes and he could almost hear his pa's laugh, feel the coolness of a creek running over his feet with the slick stones underneath, smell the mist coming off the waterfall. "Crawdad bisque," he mumbled. The flavor of the best days of his childhood. Opened his eyes then to see Jesse's twinkling back at him. "Where did you get crawdads?"

"Boy, you ain't the only one in these parts that can fish a few ornery critters from a creek."

"Well," Luke concluded, letting water-color images of a younger Jesse teaching him how to catch crawdads flash behind his eyes. "That's good stuff, Mr. Hogg. And if'n you want some, you're going to have to eat quick, because I reckon I might eat it all."

"No you ain't," Bo jumped in before Jesse could get around to scolding Luke about his manners and how a gentleman ought to treat guests. "Not unless you're willing to fight me for it."

"You really think you're man enough?"

"You boys knock it off or ain't neither of you eating one bite," Jesse intervened. "Mr. Hogg, you're welcome to have as much as you like, once it's done cooking. Which I'm going to see to, since I can't trust you boys not to go sneaking tastes." Jesse stood and a wriggling Paul tried to take advantage of how the old-timer was distracted. Luke took a couple of quick steps to help out, but Rosco beat him there.

"Ooh, look here," the marshal said, scooping the babe up to hold him in his arms. "We got ourselves a wanted criminal here. Paul Porter, public enemy number one." The boy offered Rosco the devil's smile while Jesse waddled over to Luke and took the ladle back from him. Bo shrugged and stepped away from the pot to give the pastor room to do his cooking. "Wanted for having the bluest eyes and being the cutest dickens in town," got followed up by a giggle that would have made perfect sense coming from a schoolgirl. Or a drunk man. "Not to mention them dimples. Well, I'll just, I'll just have to lock you up, jit!"

"A-la-la-la-la-la," Paul answered back in complete agreement, which set the two of them off into rollicking babble that only they could understand.

"He's a blundering fool," Hogg groused.

"He caught you, didn't he?" Bo reminded him. "He's a good lawman and you'd be sitting on an iron cot in the Morganville jail without a friend in the world right now if it wasn't for him. So you just hush."

"Dat," Hogg answered back.

"Seems to me," Jesse intervened before anyone could get around to doing or saying anything that might be regrettable later. Like if the man Bo was trying to shame ever did get himself elected to office. "That Luke was telling us about some sort of red-headed spit-fire." And what a lousy way to go about avoiding a scene. Prying into a man's personal business like that. "Who wants to be Annie Oakley."

"She ain't nothing like that," Luke defended, realizing just a second late that in so doing, he was all but confessing his interest in the girl. "What Bo there ain't willing to tell you is that she's a better horseman than he is. She can break the wildest ones," including him, really. He'd been a tough stallion, pretty sure he didn't want anything to do with a pretty filly like her when she showed up in bloomers with her sassy, bragging mouth spouting off about what she was capable of. And he'd resisted her, too, for all of about an hour. Bo hadn't been thrilled about a girl who could ride quite so beautifully and effortlessly, but he'd relented quick enough when it became clear that Luke had serious intentions toward her. Amy Creavy, her name was, and she could handle her own. "Like no one else can."

"She ain't better than me," Bo objected.

Which, Luke had to admit, was true. "As good, then," was more accurate. "And old Bo there, he ain't exactly lonely neither. He done took up with one of them ladies at the orphanage."

"Ijit!" Rosco hiccuped out. "One of them old ladies? I told you," he started, had to pause for a second when Paul decided to stick a fat finger right into his wide open mouth. The boy got put down right quick then, leaving Luke to take a couple of trotting steps to grab that tiny hand before the boy waddled off for the hills. "I told you to let them adopt you, Bo. Not to let them marry you."

"I ain't marrying no one," Bo insisted. He meant it, too. They'd talked about this, he and Luke had. And they'd decided Duke boys had bigger priorities than getting married any time soon. Like planting some crops and getting themselves some horses to breed and train. "But Miss Jill ain't no old lady, neither."

"I can't believe you ain't seen her yet, Rosco," Luke added helpfully. "Blonde girl with green eyes and the rest of her skinny as a beanpole."

"She ain't skinny, she's just slender," Bo corrected, but Rosco wasn't listening anymore.

"You got that girl? She's a looker," an awed marshal said, just this side of drooling.

"And she's taken," Bo reminded them all, just in case anyone got the notion to flirt or otherwise express interest in Jill. Which was not a problem as far as Luke was concerned. The girl was far too skinny, no matter what his young cousin had to say on the subject.

Just about then Mary Kaye saved them all from further embarrassment by showing up at Luke's side to retrieve Paul. "He don't need to learn about getting with girls, not from you lot," she teased as she scooped her little boy up and settled him into her arms. Funny how he could look so innocent sitting up there when it was already clear that he was going to grow up to be a scoundrel. "Oh, and Enos, Daisy wants you to come back inside. If I was you, I'd hustle," were her parting words as she turned back toward the cabin herself.

"Uh, oh. Guess I'd better go then," Enos realized. "It sure was nice talking to y'all." Which might have just been pure politeness, but Luke figured there was some truth hidden in there as well. It probably was quite pleasant to talk to sane people after dealing with an expecting Daisy.

Before the discussion could get itself turned back around to courting and the Duke boys' conquests, there came the rattle and clatter of another wagon arriving: Doc Cooter with Cletus in tow. "I can't cook," the doc admitted when he climbed down from his seat behind the horses and marched around to the back of his wagon. Hand digging around until he found what he wanted, "But I brought you this." Which appeared to be a live turkey in a cage made from sticks and wire. Looked like something Luke might have built when he was knee high to a boll weevil, and it was big, bulky and out of place in the doctor's hands. "Got it from Miz Tisdale in exchange for treating her rheumatism. All I ask is that you don't go killing it in front of me. I ain't a big fan of nothing dying." Which made a certain sort of sense, what with him being a doctor and spending most of his days trying to outsmart death.

"Every farm needs a turkey," Luke decided, right then and there. "To keep the chickens company." Because they had plenty of food to get through this afternoon, and poor Doc didn't have the first idea what to do with a turkey. So the unfortunately scrawny thing could stay here and get fat. Come November they would reconsider its fate.

Bo liked the idea. "Hello, Tom," he greeted the bird with a smile. "Hi Cletus," got added almost as an afterthought. Which went to show the boy's priorities.

"How's Miss Daisy doing?" Cletus asked, being a right proper gentleman and a fine doctor's assistant to boot. "She having any complications?"

"Depends what you mean by complications," Bo answered back.

"She's fine," Luke countered but if there was one thing he'd learned in the past year, it was that there was no hushing Bo when he figured he had something to say.

"I reckon if you don't consider the fact that she's like as not to take a switch to Luke and me just for breathing wrong, or that she's probably in there hassling poor old Enos half to death a complication, then she's just fine. Although," Bo added with a tired little sigh. "If'n you can figure out how to get that baby out of her soon, I sure wouldn't mind."

"Bo," Jesse scolded.

"Jesse, you ain't been the one who's had to—"

"—Boy, just you mind your manners and remember that the only thing that's important is that both Daisy and the baby are healthy."

Big huff and Bo's head dropped. "Yes, sir," he mumbled.

"Hey Bo," Luke jumped in, slinging an arm across those broad shoulders, because the boy should never look miserable like that. "Why don't you take him," indicating the turkey, who he wasn't quite willing to call Tom. Not when he figured they probably would get around to eating him some day. "Over by the coop." Saw a flicker of distaste in his cousin's eyes – at being told what to do, at being sent away like a naughty little child, at anything at all. "Then stop by the shed on your way back," Luke added with a wink and like the sun breaking out from dense clouds, Bo's smile returned.

"You got it," the blonde answered, and it was amazing how quickly he could move when he was properly motivated. Taking the cage out from the Doc's awkward grasp and he was gone, then back in a flash. Sans turkey, but with a flask in his hand; funny how Cooter's eyebrows raised at the sight.

"Bo's first batch," Luke explained for those who couldn't figure out for themselves that the vessel contained Duke whiskey, meted out from a jug in the shed. (Which was probably only Cletus. The rest of them knew what Dukes did best and some of them had intimate acquaintance with the stuff.) "For the sampling."

Cooter all but snatched it out of Bo's hand. Slight apologetic look after the fact but that didn't stop him from unscrewing the top and taking a deep sniff at the mouth of the flask. Tipped it up for a swallow, then brought it back down in time to holler, "Hoo-ey!" which was something like approval. He started to hand it back to Bo, but the boy made a gesture with his right hand – go ahead and pass it around.

Cletus figured it was as fine as Cooter had, but his judgment wasn't to be trusted. He hadn't been raised on liquor like most of them. Somehow the flask got handed to Rosco, who just stood there and stared at the container in his hand like it was a snake about to bite him.

"It's a mite stronger than water," Luke warned. "You might want to be careful how much you drink."

"Dat!" Hogg interrupted. "You ain't got to taste it to know it's whiskey, Rosco. Them boys already confessed to cooking it up and Doc Cooter over there can attest to what it is. You just arrest them boys."

Which would be interesting if the marshal did. Dade had itself a new Justice now, one Emery Potter. Who walked with a kind of listing motion, all crooked and slow from the bullet fragments still embedded in his knee. But he was honest and fair and hadn't taken a bribe in all his life. And would probably want to sample the evidence before telling Rosco that he had no case, because what the Duke boys chose to cook on their own land – whether it was crawdads or corn whiskey – was no one else's concern. This wasn't a dry county.

"You just hush your little fat self," Rosco scolded back, full of bravery and pluck before he let loose a string of nervous giggles. Considered the vessel in his hand, but the former justice snagged it away from him before he had to make a decision. Unscrewed the cap with his chained hands and sampled himself a little taste. Offered up a raised eyebrow before Rosco snatched the whiskey back from him. "No liquor for the prisoner," he declared, then went back to staring at the flask with a certain amount of fascination.

"There ain't nothing prohibiting a marshal from having a sip of whiskey every now and then," Bo advised. "Heck, you know that Jude Emery," who had stepped out of the feud sometime when Luke wasn't looking. Probably when he was laid up in old Doc's office a year ago, his arm all but immobilized. Old Jude had disappeared only to resurface as the newly appointed marshal of Walker County on far side of the ridge. "You got to figure he still enjoys himself a good drink." Because being on the side of the law wouldn't necessarily tame a man. Luke spared a thought to whether Jude had gotten himself a working gun to go along with the job.

"And that there is good stuff," Cooter added, his fingers just itching to take the flask back from Rosco if the marshal wasn't going to give in and take a swig.

"You all just leave him alone," Jesse scolded. "He comes from temperance people and he ain't never had a drop in his life. Oh hush," he rushed to add because the marshal's stammering had started up. Somewhere between denial and defending his mama. "It's true and you know it. Besides," the pastor said, snatching the liquor out of Rosco's hand, got the cap away from Hogg and screwed it back on, "Whiskey ain't good for everyone. There's some of us that oughtn't drink it."

"You included?" Cooter asked, and he was just this side of salivating. In a minute he was going to grab that whiskey right out of Jesse's hands and he was either going to get smacked for his bad manners or blessed for taking away the temptation.

"Usually," Jesse answered, keeping one meaty fist tight around the flask. "But you see, there are some traditions in this here family. My pa taught me everything from how to build a fire with ash wood to how to grow the corn, how to ferment it and ratios of water to sugar. He showed me how to drain off the backings," and poor Cooter's shoulders sagged somewhere around there when he realized that this was one of those epic tales that the pastor was known to tell. There wasn't a soul getting a drink of anything at all, not even if they desiccated and turned to dust, until the oldster was done. "And how to set the worm. He showed me how to let the whiskey settle and how to get it to bead up proper, and then I taught that same thing to Luke's pa." The hand that wasn't holding the whiskey came over to pat him on the shoulder. Quiet consolation about the family that Luke had spent years missing in just about every way that a man could.

All that time spent looking for peace in revenge and it was just a fool's quest. Never did settle back into himself until the past winter when he took Bo up to where the crosses were, and introduced the boy to the kin he'd never even known he had. Luke said his goodbyes to his ma and brother, stood there a second with his hand resting on the cross he'd made for his pa. Closed his eyes and when he opened them again, Bo was there with an arm around his shoulders and a silent offer of solidarity. It wasn't much, wasn't more than the warmth of another body so close to his that they were sharing sweat, but it was enough. Luke took in a breath like it was his first, turned around to face the land that he pa had left him, and moved forward from there. These days he couldn't even get wound up when word hit town that old Ernst Ledbetter hadn't gotten but a six month sentence for shooting him and was now settled into Atlanta as if he had never tried to murder a man in cold blood. Life right here was too good to go off chasing after trouble in the capital. (Had to be Bo's influence that made him think anything at all of it. Within context of the feud, Ledbetter's effort to kill him made sense and he'd always considered it a perfectly reasonable action until his younger cousin started needling him about how it was never okay to try to kill someone that way.)

"And Luke's pa taught it to him, and Luke taught it to Bo. This here is Bo's first batch and I'm duty-bound to have a taste," Jesse finished up.

So he did, opened the flask and drank himself a deep swallow. Let the container drop away from his mouth, held it low against his hip and licked his lips. "Whoo," he announced. "Welcome to the family, boy." Slung one arm around Luke and the other around Bo. Pulled them both close and whispered. "You boys have done real good for yourselves. I'm right proud of you." Which was all very touching, but Luke hadn't gotten his taste yet and there went Cooter, snatching the flask out of Jesse's hand while the man was busy praising his boys.

And then the liquor had to be put away, because that dust trail to the south meant that Uncle John and Aunt Elizabeth were almost here, and the last thing they'd want to see would be Duke whiskey anywhere in proximity to their pregnant daughter.

— — —

It had, Luke reflected with a yawn, been a nearly endless day. Starting at dawn with chopping wood for the fireplace and ending now at dusk with Dukes sprawled out around the cabin's porch, hands resting on overstuffed bellies. Their friends had excused themselves just as the fireflies started to flicker around the farmyard, and Enos was kind enough to take Daisy's parents into town where they would stay at the hotel. Daisy and Enos had no space for guests in their own room at the boarding house, and Luke and Bo lived a fairly primitive experience here on the farm. The beds were straw and the outhouse had been known to leave a man with splinters in unfortunate places, so Uncle John and Aunt Elizabeth had to be safely ensconced in town. That was, if they were ever expected to visit here again, and Daisy, sitting primly on the top step, was all aglow at the prospect. She'd even stopped barking orders at the menfolk long enough to come sit out here in the cool evening air with the rest of her kin.

"Agh," she said now, making them all turn to see whether Bo's wish had come true and she was having the baby early. Way too early and if she did, their poor youngest cousin would be wracked with guilt for wishing it upon her. But it wasn't a baby coming out of her, just her heeled shoes coming off. "That's better."

She was calm now; they all were. Maybe exhausted was a better word, he thought as he watched her lean her head back then rock it from side to side in hopes of a satisfying crack that never came. Sometimes it was hard, seeing her with child and the way she took to married life, to imagine that she'd spent three years as Yellow-eye, the last two as infamous scout and faithful companion to the notorious Duke. But in her unguarded moments, when she forgot all over again that she was supposed to be a lady and sat with her legs sprawled at awkward angles, tipping her head back and groaning like she'd just spent the day on the back of a horse and was only now taking a few minutes to stretch, he could see it in her.

As to the infamous Duke himself, Luke figured he was about halfway recovered from being that man. Enough to wish Ruby well and tell her to quit worrying when he ran into her in town a couple of months back and she'd apologized for her part in getting him shot. _It was the best thing that ever happened to me,_ he'd told her and she probably decided right then and there that she was much better off shed of him. He couldn't argue that point, so he'd kissed her on the cheek and told her to find a nice man that would settle down with her.

But mostly all that energy that he had put into bossing feuders around and planning strategy got used up mighty quick these days. The farm wasn't the half of what Bo dreamed it to be. The boy wanted to breed and train horses and if it took everything in him, Luke was going to see to it that those wishes came true. Which kept him plenty busy and he didn't have a lot of time to think about the past.

"You all right?" Bo asked Daisy, who was still rolling her shoulders back and cranking her head around. "Here," he added, all the quarrels of the day forgotten. "Hold still." He scooted up behind her to rub at her back and shoulders, and got rewarded with happy little moans.

Jesse, who had brought one of the hard backed chairs out onto the porch, sat behind the two of them while Luke took to leaning on the post.

"Y'all have done a fine job," the old man said, staring out into the near-darkness around them. "I'm mighty proud of you."

"We still got to build ourselves a barn," Bo answered.

"And a real bedroom. Maybe two," Luke put in. Sure, Luke was known for nightmares and once a month or so his thrashing would awaken Bo. But that was nothing. Bo's snores drowned out the sound of passing trains, of violent thunderstorms, and if a grizzly bear came in and decided to eat them at night, Luke figured he'd never hear it over the sound of those snores. He'd only figure out what had happened when Bo was completely devoured and the snoring stopped.

"I ain't talking about the farm. I mean the way you all have been looking out for each other. I reckon my generation and your parents' generation didn't do a good job of teaching you about taking care of kin, so you all must have figured it out on your own. It does a body good," got halfway caught in Jesse's throat. "To know that his kids are turning out better than he did."

"Oh, Uncle Jesse," Daisy said, slipping out from where Bo had been kneading at her shoulders so she could stand and throw her arms around the old man's neck. "We ain't never going to be the half of what you are."

"Don't argue with me girl," he scolded back, but he slipped an arm around her shoulders and held her as close as their awkward positions and her protruding belly would allow.

Bo, who never could get enough affection, stood with intention to join in the hug, but he was too tall, or a sitting Jesse was too short. He bent at the waist and tried to fit in anyway, but Jesse took pity on him and stood up, now having his niece held by one arm, and his younger nephew tight in the other.

"Get over here, Luke," he demanded. "Mind me now," came next when Luke considered demurring.

Somehow or other, he wound up in the clump with arms around him, not sure whose they were.

"I love you kids, each and every one of you," Jesse said.

"Love you more," Bo answered back.

"To the moon and back," Daisy agreed.

"You too, Uncle Jesse," Luke said, and felt old, rheumatic fingers in his hair.

A bird twittered in a tree as it settled in for the night and in the distance they could hear wagon wheels churning over rutted roads, marking Enos' slow return to retrieve his wife. The air smelled of a rain that would wash over the land before the dawn gave way to clear skies. He and Bo, who still hadn't figured out the benefits of wearing a hat even to ward off the hot sun, would set to work on this fine Duke land. In the coming years they'd fend off locusts and droughts, they'd lose crops and replant, they'd add onto the cabin until it was a full-fledged house and fight over who got to use the outhouse first, they'd raise horses and brew whiskey. Life would be good.


End file.
